12. The Cycling Tourism Tribe

Cycling has a 200-year long history with ups and downs but since more than a decade it is experiencing exceptional growth arguably because it gained in importance as a means for identity construction, bonding and signalling of social status. Some maintain that cycling has occupied the role of golf, others see the recent boom rooted in middle-aged body image crises. Whatever the root causes may be, cycling has become strongly embedded in a web of values and meanings up to the point of representing a lifestyle. This evolution affects cycling tourism as well, whose actors have realised growing numbers but have often been struggling to fully understand symbols and values of the cyclist tribe. This chapters adopts a perspective rooted in consumer sociology and explores commonalities in the cycling tourism tribe to differentiate it subsequently into its sub-tribes. While differentiation has indeed flourished, we concentrate on the three main segments of road cyclists, mountain bikers and trekking cyclists and eclectically unveil some of their status symbols, communication mechanisms and group dynamics.