Spatial and characteristic diversity among destinations along side motivational drives have given rise to as many forms of tourism as can be convenient. These, many forms of tourism, have emerged on the basis of the types of travel experiences provided at the destinations.
It may be argued that the typologies of emerging trends in tourism are nothing but more conscientious forms of tourism along ecological lines. In fact, all these new terms on tourism development can be labelled as metatourism as it brings together several related ideas into tourism’s conceptual framework.
However, the classifications worked out are by no means in assailable. Often, one may, conveniently confuse one type with another in some respects. Moreover, recent studies in tourism development have coined new terms for the various forms of tourism, which, to some extent, are quite capable of exemplifying the many forms of tourism.
Living patterns and thereby, the associated travel patterns play notably important role in the development/promotion of a specific aspect/form of tourism. In fact, in the present day tourism, there are several plausible criteria to explain the typology of tourism depending on the lifestyles and personalities, the perceptions of risk and familiarity of the tourists besides the type of destinations.
However, an approach with growing relevance to tourism in the late twentieth century has been to classify tourists on the basis of dumber of Tourists’ on the destination. It puts Mass tourism at one end and some type of alternate small-scale tourism called Selective tourism on the other.
Some like to call them as hard tourism and Soft tourism on the basis of ‘Intensity of Impact’. Alternate tourism, indeed, is a desired alternative to Mass tourism and can definitely help in solving the on-going and up-coming problems of tourism.
The various possible criteria, namely, Direction of Traffic Flow; Geographical Distribution; Number of Tourists; Tourist motivation(s); Economic Class of Tourists; Intensity of Impact; Type of Tourist Destinations; Planning Strategy; Planning Thrust; and Tourist Activity Perception mark out the various commonly prevalent notions of tourism.
Besides, tourism typology is sometimes also described along the following principles: Tourist Demographics (a) Age, (b) Number of tourists visiting a given destination; Season; Seasonality and Miscellaneous to pronounce relatively uncommon types of tourism.
During the recent past, number of studies has been conducted on models, theories, and approaches to various aspects of tourism. These studies have painted out that tourism product is a complex phenomenon which includes diversities of components, and largely depends upon the tourist motivational aspects.