Keynote by Dr Marina Novelli

Dr Marina Novelli, Reader in Tourism and International Development at the School of Sport and Service Management, gave a keynote at the International Conference on Cross-cultural Issues in Global Tourism and Hospitality which took place in Chania, Crete in May.

The keynote was titled ‘Ten years of Niche Tourism and Hospitality – What next?’:

Ten years ago, I embarked in the editing of a book called  ‘Niche Tourism: Contemporary Issues, Trends and Cases’ (2005, Elsevier). I recall the case I had to make to the publisher to convince her about the timely use of the term ‘niche tourism’ as at the time, the term ‘niche’ was mainly associated with the marketing literature with little or no reference in other fields.

Although previous research had been conducted investigating aspects of special interest tourism and specific niche markets in tourism, ‘niche tourism’ as a concept was not fully examined until 2002, when the Crichton Tourism Research Centre at the University of Glasgow held a one-day conference on the theme ‘Niche Tourism in Question: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Problems and Possibilities’, leading to a set of published proceedings (Macleod, 2003). This became one of the first examples of shared thinking on the niche tourism concept and some of its applications.

It is not a surprise that in 2004, a Google search of the keyword ‘niche tourism’ listed only few results mainly linked to the above-mentioned event and a newsletter by Tourism Scotland referring to the importance of niche marketing in tourism. Ten years later, the same Google search offers an array of 11+ million listed results.

By reflecting upon ten years of research in the field of niche tourism and the  sector’s current trends, my presentation will focus on an evaluation of the evolution of a ‘niche tourism culture’ and the role of niche hospitality in shaping what niche tourism is all about today and what may become in the future.