Explorer travellers and adventure tourism

Abstract

From an academic perspective, this slim volume is rather a chimaera. It is published by Channel View, one of a series on Tourism and Cultural Change. But it is not a typical research text. Instead, the authors interweave their own narratives, ancient myths, published literature, and occasional quotations from interviewees to construct a story about a particular subset of modern day tourists as reflecting historical social ideals of exploration. The result is readable and reasonably plausible. Because there is no clearly stated research question, method, data, or analysis, however, the reader cannot tell how accurate or reliable the conclusions may be.