Alternative tourism combines tourist products or individual tourist services, different from the mass tourism by means of supply, organization and the human resource involved. The term is often referred as "trendy" expression replacing other semantical terms such as "different" or "other tourism", "intelligent" or "motivated tourism", "anti-tourism" or "participative tourism" just to name few of them.
Contents
Forms
The term "alternative tourism" tries to include the concepts of active tourism as well as explorer and encounter travel even with the concept of committed tourism. The following lists try to enumerate some of the styles of alternative tourism. Sources that state a number of different styles are and
Active tourism
Explore and encounter travel
Committed tourism
Terminology critiques
Since the term alternative is ambiguous, there are numerous critical remarks stating that the concept is only " (...) a fashionable idea among those who are dissatisfied with the nature of mass tourism (...)". The critics state, that alternative tourism lacks a clear definition of what is the tourism style alternative to. The origins of the term can be found in two alternating concepts:
Others express their critical opinions regarding the term as fetish-adjective, miracle-word, mythical-term.