The Role of Niche Tourism Products in Destination - Repository ...

2002; Stronge, 2000). Morgan and Pritchard (1999) highlight how SIT serves to indicate qualitative differences from those of mass
tourism, promoting tourism that is more socially responsible and community focused.
Difficulties arise in academic debate when trying to define SIT. Hall and Weiler in their original work propose SIT to occur when
‘travellers’ motivation and decision-making are primarily determined by a particular special interest,’ (Hall and Weiler, 1992, p.5).
Further definitions (Swarbrooke and Horner, 1999; Derrett, 2001; Douglas, Douglas and Derrett, 2001) expand this to characterise
SIT as:
motivated by a desire to engage in new or existing interests in a novel or familiar location;
the opposite of mass tourism;
tourism undertaken for a specific or distinct reason; and
having emerged because of the desire to deliver a more sustainable tourism product.
Douglas et al. (2001) expand this debate to define the characteristics of SIT as ‘flexible delivery, market segmentation and
advances in technology affecting management and distribution’ (Douglas et al., 2001, p.3).
Similarly, when setting SIT in a broader tourism framework Brotherton and Himmetoglu’s (1997) work proposes a ‘Tourism Interest
Continuum’. This emerges through increased travel experience, resulting in a maturity of the tourist life cycle from safe to more
experimental and adventurous forms of tourism activity, enabling the tourist to seek self prestige and self enhancement. Their work
sought to refine SIT theory from the global/macro to the local/micro also focusing on levels of involvement. This motivational
approach is also apparent in the various typologies that have emerged from other SIT studies (Trauer, 2006). Trauer (2006) also
raises an interesting area for discussion, examining how various special interest segments (e.g., sport, rural, event and adventure)