Previous travel experience is a further aspect that is likely to affect an individual's perception of a holiday as an adventure . Pearce and Caltabiano (1983) proposed the concept of a travel career ladder. While it has been further developed (Pearce and Moscardo 1985; Pearce and1988),adopted (Kim 1997), and critiqued (Ryan 1998), the essential premises of the concept based on Maslow's need hierarchy is as following : Tourists are initially more concerned with fulfilling physiological and safe needs. With greater experience they increasingly seek to satisfy higher level need such as relationship, self - esteem, and self-actualization. Adventure tourism has so far been mosstly related to an individual's pursuit of peak experience s attempting to address a need for self esteem- actualization. According to the travel career ladder, this would generally refer to more experienced tourists. However, it is conceivable that a first-time tourist, attempting to satisfy mainly lower level needs, perceives the above mentioned cultural tour to Rome as more challenging and risks, and requisite of many more skills, than for instance an experienced high altitude trekker world perceive his 50th trip to the Himalayas.