Sole surfers?: exploring family status and travel behaviour among surf travellers

Extending the notion of customer value to surfing camps

“…There are certain key demographic differences between surfers that could help determine the appropriate services that establishments could provide. Porter and Usher (2019) suggest that older, married, or parent surf users are willing to pay more for services. Others use the surfing experience as a means of acquiring time for themselves away from family or partners, preferring friends as travel companions.…”

“…An important surfing-related business is tourism, which involves thousands of accommodation units (resorts and homestays), channel distributors (tour operators, wholesalers, and travel agents) as well as vertically integrated services ( Barbieri and Sotomayor, 2013 ; Ratten, 2018 ). Although there is no commonly accepted official definition for surf tourism ( Barbieri and Sotomayor, 2013 ; Porter and Usher, 2019 ), Fluker (2003 , p.7) notes some elements of this activity as follows: “The act of people travelling to either domestic locations for a period of time not exceeding 6 months, or international locations for a period of time not exceeding 12 months, who stay at least one night, and where the active participation in the sport of surfing, where the surfer relies on the power of the wave for forward momentum, is the primary motivation for selection.” …”

In Search of Waves: A Life Course Analysis of the Mobile Lifestyle of Finnish Surfer-travellers

“…Towner (2016, p. 63) explains that 'Surfing becomes tourism as soon as surfers travel away from their local surf break, with riding waves as the primary purpose for travel'. The archetypal travelling surfer is a young adult travelling without a family, on a longer journey, spending relatively little money on a daily basis (e.g., Ford & Brown, 2006, p. 49;Porter & Usher, 2018). But they usually are by no means poor, and surf travel is typically practiced by people from affluent societies.…”

Snowboarding, motherhood and mobility

“…Indeed, one of the signifiers of status within lifestyle subcultures is related to the experience of travel (Thorpe, 2017(Thorpe, , 2015Wheaton, 1997Wheaton, , 2017Wheaton and Beal, 2003). Increasing attention has been paid to lifestyle mobilities in action sport cultures over recent years (Porter and Usher, 2019;Rickly, 2016;Thorpe, 2017Thorpe, , 20142012) But what happens when these committed sports participants have children?…”

“…Despite the extensive 'lifestyle sports' literature, and the growing body of work focused on 'migrant tourist-workers' (Bianchi, 2000), 'working tourists' (Duncan, 2008), and 'lifestyle travellers' (Cohen, 2009;Cohen, Duncan and Thulemark, 2015) reference to families remains scarce. Porter and Usher's (2019) work is unusual in that it explores the relationship between family life cycle and surf travel. Whilst work on lifestyle sports has extended to include a focus on older participants (e.g.…”