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This research paper aims to better understand the characteristics of backpackers who stay at hostels in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), Canada, and their current service preferences.

Primary data were collected by carrying out interviews with 20 experienced backpackers from seven countries. As a result, 15 critical backpackers' requirements were identified and used as the base for the questionnaire developed for the next phase of field research. At this phase, 385 backpackers from 35 countries completed the questionnaires.

The backpackers cannot be treated as a homogeneous group, and there are differences due to demographics of gender, age and country of origin. The traditional youth tourist backpacker (15‐25 years of age) viewed backpacking as more a social and cultural experience than the transition backpacker (26‐29 years of age) or contemporary backpacker (30 years of age and older). As age increased, so did the backpacker's desire and willingness to pay for privacy. Asian and North/South Americans required more hotel type services than Australians and Europeans.

In conclusion, the paper provides hostels in GTA with future directions grouped as four key factors.

The authors of this paper examine the role of the guidebook as a symbol and the implications of symbols in relation to tourist behaviors. The objective of the researchers is to determine if guidebooks act as a symbol for group identity within the backpacker community.

The researchers conducted ten in‐depth interviews in a Halifax youth hostel in Nova Scotia to collect data for analysis. The data obtained in this study is analyzed through a thematic analysis that involved grouping background information with the data that related to each criterion for a symbol.

From the analysis of information obtained from the eight respondents, guidebooks accomplish three functions equivalent to the three criteria of symbols: facilitating communication, providing the basis for attitude development and acceptable modes of behavior, and facilitating collaboration and conformity of the group.

There are several limitations to this study that includes sample size, location, and time restrictions. Consequently, generalization of results beyond the specifics of this sample is limited.

The subculture of backpackers is able to survive because the social interaction within the backpacker community preserves and develops the meaning of symbols. An examination into the symbolic meanings held by backpackers provides implications in predicting backpacker behaviors and destination marketing.

Australia's agricultural industry has become highly dependent on young low-cost, overseas “working holiday” visa workers known as “backpackers”, who are notoriously subject to exploitative workplace practices. This study aimed to explore backpackers' experiences in terms of how job demands, job resources and personal resources influence their appraisals of working in agriculture.

In-depth semi-structured interviews were used to explore the work experiences of N = 21 backpackers employed under the Australian Working Holiday visa (subclass 417). Data were analyzed by thematic analysis and organized in terms of job demands and resources.

This study revealed job demands commonly experienced by agricultural backpacker workers (e.g. precarity, physically strenuous work, low pay), and job resources (e.g. adequate training, feedback) and personal resources (e.g. attitude, language) that buffer the demands. The findings indicate that backpackers' appraisals of their experiences and performance decline when demands outweigh resources.

This study offers an emic perspective on the work of an understudied segment of the agricultural workforce. The findings have implications for improving work practices and policies aimed at attracting and retaining this important labor source in the future.

To determine which factors account for customer satisfaction with a service and their loyalty to a given service provider, in the particular, context of “backpacking” in Australia, a significant element of the country's hospitality and tourism economy.

A series of hypotheses was developed from the services marketing literature and built into a 52 item questionnaire administered to 281 backpackers staying at the three youth hostels in Australia, who thus responded whilst actually experiencing the service encounter rather than in recalling it later. The European Customer Satisfaction Index (ECSI) was used to measure the strength and direction of the determinants of customer satisfaction, and the impact that the antecedents of satisfaction had on loyalty to the generic provider.

The results of confirmatory factor analysis of the questionnaire responses suggest that brand image is a predictor of satisfaction with a hostel, while perceived value indicates a degree of loyalty towards the “brand”.

The ECSI model's generic measuring criteria limit its generalisability. Further, research could usefully investigate other variables applicable to both hostels and conventional hotels to be included in a measurement model of satisfaction and loyalty for the whole hospitality industry.

Backpacker hostels are an example of experienced‐based service encounters with few clear comparative advantages. The marketing of the generic brand must therefore foster a brand image congruent with the experience actually delivered and the potential customers' expectations of it, thereby reducing decision risk.

The unusual context and particular methodology cast fresh light on an important challenge for marketing planners in the service industries.

The purpose of this paper is to deconstruct the backpacker label by reconstructing it using the historical antecedent of drifting. Following the deconstruction of backpacking’s near past, the author build a clearer conceptual foundation for backpacking’s future.

The study is framed by scenario planning, which demands a critical review of the backpacking and an appreciation of its history in order to understand its future.

Backpacking, ever evolving, remains difficult to articulate and challenges researchers to “keep up” with its complexity and heterogeneity. This paper argues that researchers must learn more about how backpacking “works” by opening a dialogue with its past, before engaging in further research. The paper finds that a poor conceptualisation of backpacking has led to a codification of backpacker criteria.

Backpacking remains a research topic which draws disparate researchers using criteria that produces disparate results and deviations. By understanding its past, researchers will be better placed to explore the emancipatory impulses that drive backpackers today and in the future.

This papers’ value lies in the retrospection process which explores backpacking’s near past so as to “make sense” of present research and present scenarios for it is the immediate future. The paper re-anchors backpacking by investigating the major historical, social and cultural events leading up to its emergence.

The aim of this paper is to contribute to the understanding of backpackers’s evaluation of service quality provided by hostels by developing a battery of items to assess perceptions of the overall hostel experience.

Scale development took a mixed approach that combines qualitative and quantitative research. First, the authors performed a content analysis of reviews provided by guests in hostel booking web sites, in-depth interviews with hostel managers and focus groups with guests, to develop a battery of items to assess the hostel experience from the guests’ perspective. Then, a quantitative survey (n = 222) was conducted, to explore the dimensionality of service quality in this sector. Lisbon hostels are the target of this study, as they received several awards based on the online reviews of backpackers.

The results revealed that service quality is a multidimensional concept and includes six dimensions, namely, social atmosphere, location and city connection, staff, cleanliness, security and facilities. Regression results revealed that the social atmosphere appears to be a core service dimension crucial to create a sense of hostel guest’s overall quality.

The findings suggest that service quality scales should incorporate the specific characteristics of the hotel industry. The quality of the staff and the social atmosphere are of utmost importance to enhance the hostel backpacker experience.

The research goal of this study was to determine how flow experience and perceived behavioral control (PBC) affect participation behavior in the backpackers' forum.

Subjects were self‐selected by placing messages on over five recommendations members in the backpackers' forum. In total, 2,000 invitation messages were mailed to members of the Taiwanese backpackers' forum, of which 435 were returned completed (a return rate of 21.75 percent).

As our analysis, flow experience in a virtual community is positively associated with the behavioral intentions to use the virtual community. Perceived enjoyment in a virtual community is positively associated with the behavioral intentions to use the virtual community, and behavioral intentions to visit a virtual community are positively associated with the member's actual participation in a virtual community.

While this study has produced meaningful data for the development of multidimensional measures of factors that influence participation behavior in the Taiwanese backpackers' forum, the validity of an instrument cannot be firmly established on the basis of a single study. All of the data used for tests were collected only from a single backpackers' forum.

Our study shows that travel agencies must become technologically astute to keep up with its customers, should be viewing the internet as a vital distribution channel for marketing, and should be linked to other well‐known reservation web sites.

The backpacker community served as a reference group that could significantly influence travelers' beliefs, attitudes, and choices.

In the present study we found that a basic understanding of the essence of the backpacker community is a prerequisite for any organization operating a travel‐oriented community if they are to be clear about their mission, purpose, and the right direction to take to achieve their goal. That goal will increase the commitment of the members to a virtual community by increasing their helping behavior and active participation.

The purpose of this paper is to provide researchers with an analytical tool for deconstructing well‐established tourist typologies in which motivations and meanings are coupled together with practices of travel arrangements.

In line with the distinction between types and forms of tourism, the analysis examines the motivations and meanings (type‐related attributes) of tourists who comply with conventional travel arrangements and practices (form‐related attributes) of backpacking. The backpackers' motivations and meanings are analyzed in light of a revised version of Cohen's phenomenological typology of tourist experiences.

The analysis suggests that contemporary backpacking is a form of tourism that can be further segmented into sub‐types by the variety of meanings backpackers assign to their experiences.

The distinction between type and form can be used for deconstruction of tourist categories other than backpackers. However, this distinction cannot be expected to completely cover the complexity and variety of tourists' behaviours and attitudes.

The study presents evidence to suggest that the implicit inclination that tourists who travel in the same manner also share the same motivations and meanings is open to doubt. Accordingly, the paper stresses the need for cautious and sensitive tourist typologies that capture the existing variety in tourism.