Explorer Travellers and Adventure Tourism

This book examines the nexus between exploring and tourism and argues that exploration travel – based heavily on explorer narratives and the promises of personal challenges and change – is a major trend in future tourism. In particular, it analyses how romanticised myths of explorers form a foundation for how modern day tourists view travel and themselves. Its scope ranges from the 'Golden Age' of imperial explorers in the 19th and early 20th centuries, through the growth of adventure and extreme tourism, to possible future trends including space travel. The volume should appeal to researchers and students across a variety of disciplines, including tourism studies, sociology, geography and history.

Jennifer Frost is an Associate Professor in the Department of Management, Sport and Tourism at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia. Her research interests include travel narratives; the role of events in society; rural and regional regeneration through tourism and events; and health and wellness tourism. Her most recent co-authored research book is Royal Events: Rituals, Innovations, Meanings (Routledge, 2018). Jennifer is a co-editor of the Routledge Advances in Events Research series and was recognised in 2017 as an Emerging Scholar of Distinction by the International Academy for the Study of Tourism.

Warwick Frost is Professor of Tourism, Heritage and the Media at La Trobe University, Australia. His research interests include heritage tourism, tourism and the media, events and environmental history. With Associate Professor Jennifer Frost, he is Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Heritage Tourism. He is the author or editor of 16 books. His most recent are, Jennifer Frost and Warwick Frost, Medieval Imaginaries in Contemporary Media, Heritage and Tourism (Routledge, 2022) and Warwick Frost, An Environmental History of Australian Rainforests until 1939: Fire, Rain, Settlers and Conservation (Routledge, 2021).