Mieczkowski (1995) does identify
‘alternative tourism’ as a tourism type but only in its relation as one of the
two broad categories along a spectrum of tourism types. The first is
Conventional Mass Tourism (CMT), which has prevailed on the market for
some time. The second broad category is that of Alternative Tourism (AT),
a flexible generic category that contains a multiplicity of various forms that
have one feature in common – they are alternatives to CMT. That is, they are
not associated with mass large-scale tourism but are essentially small scale,
low-density, dispersed in non-urban areas, and they cater to special interest
groups of people with mainly above average education and with relatively
high-disposable incomes.
As to the specific forms of AT, Mieczkowski (1995) distinguishes such
forms as cultural, educational, scientific, adventure, and agri-tourism with
rural, ranch, and farm subsets (see Fig. 1.1). Significantly, there is some
overlap with CMT but the main criteria of distinction are the scale and
character of the impacts. Another overlap occurs between the various
types of AT themselves. Cultural tourism, for example, is to a large extent
educational and ecotourism is aligned with nature-based tourism. Thus
Mieczkowski (1995) finds it difficult to place ecotourism in the context of
AT because, while not coinciding directly with cultural tourism, it overlaps
with the educational, scientific, adventure, and agri-tourism forms;
and more recently this would include pro-poor tourism and volunteer
tourism.