Search results

People have unconscious motives which affects their decision-making and associated behavior. The paper describes a study using thematic apperception test (TAT) to measure how unconscious motives influence travelers' interpretations and preferences toward alternative tours and hotels. Using the TAT, the present study explores the relationships between three unconscious needs: (1) achievement, (2) affiliation, and (3) power and preferences for four package tours (adventure, culture, business, and escape tours) and for seven hotel identities (quality, familiarity, location, price, friendliness, food and beverage, and cleanliness and aesthetics). The present study conducts canonical correlation analyses to examine the relationships between unconscious needs and preferences for package tours and hotel identities using data from 467 university students. The study scores 2,438 stories according to the TAT manual to identify unconscious needs. The findings indicate that (1) people with a high need for affiliation prefer an experience based on cultural values and hotels that are conveniently located, (2) individuals with a high need for power indicate a preference for high prices and good value for their money, and (3) people with a high need for achievement prefer a travel experience with adventure as a motivation. The study findings are consistent with previous research of McClelland (1990), Wilson (2002), and Woodside et al. (2008) in exploring impacts of the unconscious levels of human need.

Many studies have examined the influence of travel motivation on destination preferences; however, little is known about Muslim tourists’ leisure travel behaviour. This study aims to examine the influence of travel motivation on destination preferences using the moderating effect of religiosity from the perspective of Iranian and Malay Muslims.

Data were collected from 422 Malay and Iranian Muslim students using a purposive sampling technique, and later analyzed using Amos.

Results indicated that generic, Islamic and non-Islamic motivational factors influence social, religious and hedonic avoidance travel preferences. Muslims who are motivated by generic and non-Islamic motivations avoid travels to destinations with the presence of Islamic service and products, while those who are motivated by religious factors prefer destinations with Islamic attributes.

The results of this study highlight the importance of Islamic-related features in destinations for Muslim tourists.

As the population of the western world is aging, the importance of seniors for the tourism economy is growing. Seniors are expected to be an important future market. Thus overall leisure behaviour in general, and travel and tourism behaviour in particular, are analysed for the example of the Austrian market.

A focus group was conducted with participants aged 55+, where their leisure and travel habits as well as preferences were investigated.

The results showed that leisure and travelling played a major role in the participants’ lives. Additionally, the participants did not change their travel behaviour considerably when entering retirement status. While they changed their preferences to longer stays and to travelling off‐season, their preferences considering holiday destinations, mode of transport or distance of travel did not change significantly. The assumption that travel behaviour and travel preferences are acquired over a longer time span during the life of tourists and will therefore not change considerably when retiring can be confirmed for the participants of the focus group.

It can be concluded that future senior tourists will differ from today’s travelling seniors in their travel behaviour and their preferences. A larger sample and more detailed research concerning the actual motivation and preferences of Austrian holiday travellers, as well as the factors influencing them, are necessary in order to be able to react adequately to future demands of senior tourists.

The paper contributes to a better understanding of the importance of and attitude towards leisure and tourism in the growing senior market. Based on the results of a focus group, it serves as a basis for further research in the field.

Although experiential consumption has received some attention from tourism and hospitality researchers in the past decade, the profile of experiential consumers has not been discussed thus far. The purpose of this paper is thus twofold: to test the sociodemographic antecedents of experiential versus utilitarian consumption for profiling purposes and to examine the potential behavioral consequences of experiential versus utilitarian consumption tendencies.

On an online research platform, 413 respondents answered questions concerning logic-based/emotion-based decision-making traits, as well as sociodemographic characteristics and several travel behavior variables.

Data revealed that emotion-based decision makers are more likely to be females, who are more passionate about their travel needs than are logic-based decision makers. Results also revealed that the importance that emotion-based decision makers place on travel preferences, potential travel risks and travel information sources is higher than that of their logic-based counterparts.

The current study used one personality trait, emotion-based decision-making, as a proxy for experiential consumption. There are other potentially explanatory traits that should be investigated in future studies.

Destination marketing organizations (DMOs) promoting destinations with historical and cultural attractions can capitalize on the finding that these attractions are highly demanded by both types of decision makers, whereas DMOs of man-made attraction destinations may need to find ways to embellish the significance of these attractions for both types of decision makers.

Even though social risk was the lowest-rated item in general, both decision-making traits were highly correlated with social risk. The higher the tendency in the decision-making style, either logic-based or emotion-based, the more important how a trip would make them look within their social circle. Social risk concerns for both types of decision makers should be addressed in marketing messages.

The current study represents one of the earliest attempts to draw a picture of experiential consumers in comparison with utilitarian consumers in sociodemographic and behavioral characteristics.

One of the most well-known, seminal models in the tourism marketing field is the one proposed more than 40 years ago by Stanley Plog. His venturesomeness model has been widely cited in journal articles, textbooks, and has also been used as a reference for planning and designing tourism marketing projects. However, empirical research on Plog’s psychographic model has yielded varied, inconclusive results, and the postulates of his conceptual framework are still subject to academic scrutiny. While some empirical investigations have corroborated the model, others have found partial or no support for it. Therefore, the purpose of this chapter is to offer an exhaustive review of 26 studies in the literature which have employed Plog´s venturesomeness concept to examine travellers’ personality traits, attitudes, and behaviour, as a way to synthetise empirical findings and draw conclusions from the cumulative results. A discussion of the model’s contribution to the current body of knowledge and managerial implications for tourism marketing practitioners are presented.

This paper aims to reveal the similarities and variances in activity patterns among those traveling alone and with a different mix of travel companions in the context of nature-based tourism.

In this research, five different travel parties (alone, with small children, with older children, with friends and with partner) and 25 tourist activities are research variables. The study selects Norway as the destination country in relation to activity patterns. Its data, collected from a questionnaire survey of residents from the United Kingdom, Sweden and France, contain 6,935 responses.

The study finds that traveling with a partner is the preferred mix for traveling to Norway. A correspondence analysis on activity patterns reveals that traveling with friends and traveling with a partner show some similarities in activity patterns, where the other three groups prove notable differences in activity patterns compared to these two groups.

The study empirically tests the relationship between the mix of travel party and the choice of tourist activity in the context of nature-based tourism in Norway. It provides new market insights that can assist tourism businesses to further tailor products and services to traveling public involving different types of companions.

This research aims to treat voluntary simplicity lifestyle (VSL) as general lifestyle and explore the correlation between VSL and selection preference of special interest tourism (SIT).

This research adopts a questionnaire survey. The content of the questionnaire include questions on participants' demographic variables, VSL, and selection preference of SIT. After designing the questionnaire of selection preference of SIT, this research treats the tourists in the Taiwan Guandu bird‐watching area as the targets and distributes the questionnaires. This research adopts systematic sampling for questionnaire distribution.

The following results are found: a positive correlation between selection preference of SIT and VSL; females are mostly allocated as the recreation and entertainment type people preferring SIT, the educational level of diverse interest type people preferring SIT tend to be higher, and these people have a more significant VSL; people who are the low degree of identification type with voluntary simplicity reveal almost the least scores in terms of all kinds of traveling preference, whereas complete involvement type individuals show a higher degree of preference.

This questionnaire is not exclusive. In other words, the respondents can provide extremely high, medium, or low scores for the preference for any kind of trips. Thus, the respondents' real preference sequence cannot be distinguished. Future studies can modify this questionnaire. The questionnaire of selection preference of SIT designed by this research mainly followed the SIT itineraries promoted on traveling websites and upon certain processes. Thus, this questionnaire content is based on the view of the supply end.

This research follows the suggestions of McKercher and Chan, and after internet searching, the method imitates content analysis to establish a questionnaire with 18 questions with respect to the selection preference of SIT. Through factor analysis, the researchers select four kinds of selection preference of SIT, including traveling preference of recreation and entertainment, natural ecology, physical exploration, and history and art. In addition, this research also uses confirmatory factor analysis to confirm the convergent validity of the VSL questionnaire developed by the authors (2005).

The interests of outbound Chinese tourist behaviors have been of much recent research interest, yet the youth segment has received relatively little attention. By surveying young Chinese in Macao this chapter provides some glimpses into their aspirations and planning for future travel. The definition of “young” in this chapter is people aged between 18 and 35 years which is adapted from the Pacific Asia Travel Association in its “Young Tourism Professional” program. The impetus lies in the potential malleability of preferred destinations for this new generation of Chinese tourists since the precedents of the past and the limitations of language and group control over travel have weakened in the last 10 years.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how international tourists’ cosmopolitan values change due to the restraining fear of terrorism, and how this change affects their worldview, destination perception and travel preferences.

In-depth interviews were conducted with international travellers from all five continents to pinpoint the universal shifts in cosmopolitan values, specifically regarding risk perception in the face of terrorism.

Tourists’ personal values are changing due to the increased risk of terrorism (or the perception of it), which prompts international travellers to act less on their desire for stimulation and more for their need for security when travelling. Just as any change in values tends to be relatively permanent, this value shift might have long-term consequences for the entire tourism industry.

Terrorism risk perception and its retraining effect regarding willingness to travel were established to be significant and universal. However, this study suggests that the strength of the travellers’ cosmopolitan orientation influences the extent terrorism risk is acted upon. Results indicate that the higher the travellers’ cosmopolitan conviction is, the less significantly they seem to be affected by the fear of terrorism.

The study offers cues on how managers and policy makers can enhance destination image that keeps up with the current realities of global tourism in the face of terrorism, and highlights a promising market segment, strongly cosmopolitan travellers who are less concerned with potential travel risks and react less negatively in troubled times.

Most of the previous studies considered tourists’ cosmopolitanism as a stable orientation rather than a context-specific state. This study addresses this gap by exploring how resilient the tourists’ cosmopolitan desire for openness and freedom is under the risk perception of terrorism, and what effect the fear of terrorism has on their travel habits.

This study aims to ascertain the effect of socio‐demographic constraints on dimension of travel choice. This study also seeks to derive personal ecological explanations for variation in travel preference, travel intention and travel choice behavior of a wide range of destinations.

A large representative sample of 49,105 Australian respondents is utilized. Binary logistic regression is used to determine the impact of constraint variables.

Age, income and life stage have significant differential and interactive effects on travel behavior. Socio‐demographic variables act in different ways to constrain/free different types of travel behavior. However there are significant levels of travel by even the most constrained groups as well as significant amounts of non‐travel by the least constrained sectors of our society. These impacts are country specific.

The travel motivations of constraint groups need to be considered to order better understand travel behavior. Investigation of psychological and ecological facilitators and constraints to travel is needed.

This information is most useful for market segmentation and the development of constraint group destination marketing plans. Managers can use utilize such results to minimize the barriers to travel by particular groups.

This paper utilizes a large database to provide insights into the personal ecological constraints to travel.