Backpackers: The next generation? - Scholarly Commons Home

Backpackers: The next generation?
Backpackers are one part of this market cornucopia. Pearce’s (1990) original
definition of backpackers included a preference for budget accommodation and
emphases on meeting other travellers, flexible itineraries, longer rather than
shorter holidays and informal and participatory holidays. Most studies of
backpackers have indicated that more than 80% of backpackers are less than 30
years of age (Richards & Wilson, 2004a).
Industry definitions
The travel and tourism industry has multiple offerings for travellers along
Cohen’s entire continuum of risk. His organized mass tourists, called packaged or
group travellers by the industry, can participate in holidays ranging from
“traditional” bus tours viewing a region’s scenic highlights to innovative study
tours, adventure tours, or cruises. Cohen’s individual mass tourists cross-mix
with his explorers to combine travel plans with preferred elements of organized
and independent itineraries, such as the pilgrims who enjoy leisure resort
tourism on their religious quests (Mustonen, 2005), or the volunteers who
combine two weeks of hard labour with a few days of complete luxury (C. P.
Collier, 2007).
The multiplicity and independence of travel experiences and roles that
contemporary tourists can choose has created its own industry term, Free
Independent Travellers (FITs). For the North American and European travel
industry of the 1980s, FIT referred to individuals travelling internationally who
pre-purchased full packages including air, accommodation, and rental car but
who travelled independently (e.g., not on a motorcoach) (personal
communications with A. Schmidt, American Ring Travel, October 2007). More
recently in New Zealand, FIT has been defined as those travellers who may pre-
purchase only airfare to their destination through a professional retailer, but
nothing else (A. Collier, 2006). Hyde and Lawson (2003) expand this definition
to consider all people as FITs who independently book air plus destination
accommodations or activities online. Conversely, NZ Ministry of Tourism has
adopted the less-known term Semi Independent Travellers (SITs) to denote those
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