An Introduction To Active Holidays

By Author: Salvatore Andrea
Total Articles: 6240
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A holiday is defined as a day where business is suspended in celebration of a specific event. It is generally an official or unofficial observance of religious, national, or cultural significance, often accompanied by celebrations or festivities. The word holiday is derived from the notion of "Holy Day", and gradually evolved to its current form. The word originally referred only to special religious days. In modern use, it means any particular day of rest or relaxation, in contrast to normal days away from work or school. There are many kinds of holidays like religious holiday, secular holidays, national holidays, unofficial holidays, etc.

A holiday on which you spend your time doing a particular activity such as walking, canoeing, rock-climbing, painting, or cooking is called active holidays. Active holiday is a lifestyle form. There has always been adventurous travelling, most frequently emerging during the regeneration. Although its form has undergone smaller changes, it is still based on human curiosity. Travelers from all over the world ...
... tend to more frequently abandon the prescribed routes and give over to the world of the unknown. The man is probably the only one among species that would climb a mountain peak for mere curiosity or travel to other continents just for exploration purposes. People have always been interested in new cultures, impressive and unknown districts. Therefore, active tourism is not a new phenomenon both in theory and in practice. Active tourism is a part of the market of special-interest tourism. Active holiday is a product of special-interest market.

Most of the authors define active holiday as a responsible travel to foreign areas requiring physical and mental participation from the tourist and following the maxims of sustainability, protection of biodiversity and conservation of culture. Important elements are recreation and education, respect and contemplation, action and exercise." According to H. Sung (1997), activity holiday is a trip or travel with the specific purpose of activity participation to explore a new experience, often involving perceived risk or controlled danger associated with personal challenges, in a natural environment or exotic outdoor setting.