The concept of 'niche tourism' has emerged in recent years in counter-point to what is commonly referred as 'mass tourism'. In a globalising world of increasing sameness, niche tourism represents diversity and ways of making difference. It plays on the pejorative connections that have accompanied the evolution of mass and package tourism and their, often cited, negative impacts in relation to environmental degradation and socio-cultural disturbance. For destination managers and planners seeking to utilise tourism as a mechanism for economic development, the niche tourism approach appears to often greater opportunities and a tourism that is more sustainable, less damaging and more capable of delivering high spending tourists.
The term niche tourism is largely borrowed from the term niche marketing, which in turn has appropriated the niche concept from the language of the relatively recent discipline of ecology.
Tourists, as consumers have developed increasing levels of expertise and experience of being tourists. Whilst this developmental pattern of tourists may not always be linear or simplistic.
Figure 2: Niche Tourism Components