A further important association with the niche idea is one of intimacy in terms of
process. There is almost a tinge of amateurism connected with the niche tourism
idea. Holidays for photography or steam engine enthusiasts and the like invoke a
certain feeling of ‘anorakism’. Beneath the surface, however, niche tourism is far
from intimate and amateur in its operations. Indeed, it generally is representative of
a highly sophisticated approach to marketing which allows a marked degree of
segmentation and ongoing relationships built with a client base. Niche tourism may
be a packaged form of tourism and in terms of the potential numbers of niches it
can fill comes close to a mass phenomenon. At one level this is operated through a
network of small firms (tour operators, hotels, etc.), making use of the low barriers
to entry that are a feature of the tourism industry, and employing information
technology almost as a form of ‘cottage industry’. At another level, niche tourism
can be operated through very large, transnational firms (that also deliver mass
tourism packages) using highly developed expert systems that can deliver product
variety but in an effective, standardised way. From the perspective of the tourist,
the product appears to be ‘niched’ to their highly individual needs, but is delivered
to what can be an exceedingly large number of individual tourists sharing similar
interests and needs. This then can be interpreted not as some ‘post-Fordist’
fragmentation of production, but rather as a neo-Fordist move towards flexible