Visitors’ diversified motivations and behavior – the case of the pilgrimage center in Krakow (Poland)

The article presents the visitors’ motivations and behavior at the pilgrimage center in Krakow (Poland). Here, the relation between these elements, i.e. whether their motivations have a correlation with what buildings they visit, is emphasized for the first time. The most important motivations for visits were religious and tourist ones, often rated equally high by the same respondents. They visited religious, cultural and tourist buildings and facilities. The stay of visitors with religious motivations was not limited to religious practices, but was extended by tourist behavior. Similarly, visitors with tourist motivations visited religious buildings and participated in religious practices. However, they visit tourist and cultural facilities more often. Additionally, the three groups of respondents were categorized and, on the basis of importance of the religious and tourist motivations, three types were distinguished, i.e. pilgrims, religious tourists and tourists. Their characteristic has been expanded by the analysis of their behavior. Nowadays, visitors’ motivations and behavior at pilgrimage centers include those typical for pilgrims and tourists in the traditional meaning. In addition to their religious function, these sites offer cultural and tourist facilities. The article highlights the dedifferentiation approach to visitors’ motivations and behavior, and in respect of the spatial organization of pilgrimage centers.     

Who Pays More for a Cultural Festival,Tourists or Locals? A Certainty Analysis of a Contingent Valuation Application

Cultural festivals are one of the most common representations of diversification strategies in tourist demand in cities boasting abundant historical heritage. The goal of this work is to estimate the economic value allocated by tourists and local residents to a classical music festival in the emblematic city of Santiago de Compostela (Spain). The contingent valuation method is used to ascertain whether there are any significant differences between the value declared and to study the sensitivity of the findings in a range of socio‐economic variables. Finally, the problems of hypothetical bias are explored, as are the possible implications for management of pricing policies. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Factor Structure of Tourist Satisfaction at Pilgrimage Destinations: the Case of Medjugorje

Although there is an abundance of studies on secular tourist satisfaction and perceived quality of respective tourist destinations, these issues have remained largely neglected when it comes to pilgrimage destinations. The objective of this paper thus is to investigate the key drivers of tourist satisfaction in a pilgrimage destination context by using the case of Medjugorje, one of the most renowned shrines to the Virgin Mary in the world. A recently proposed moderated regression analysis is used to explore whether individual destination attributes can be classified into factors with either a larger or smaller potential to generate satisfaction than dissatisfaction, according to the three‐factor theory of customer satisfaction. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Film-induced tourist motivations. The case of Seville (Spain)

Tourists' attraction to filmed sites has increased destination marketing organisations (DMOs) interest in film-induced tourism. Seville, Spain, has been the setting of many national and international film productions. Film tourism research has focused on impacts, travel preferences and destination choice, but there is a lack of research on motivations of film tourism. As a consequence, DMO actions in film tourism are often developed ad hoc, in an unplanned and opportunistic way without understanding the phenomenon. This research tries to fill this gap by focusing on film tourism in Seville in order to identify film tourists' motivations. Results identify film tourism activity and find five motivations of the film-induced tourist in Seville: film site experiences, fantasy, novelty, touring the film and personal film-location connection. Results show films add something valuable to destination experience (as a secondary or tertiary attraction). Destination managers should consider novelty factor as an element to enhance tourist experience, especially for non-European ones as well as for female tourists and tourist above 25 years, to motivate a slightly positive site experience.     

Naked and dirty: rethinking (not) attending festivals

This article draws together critical tourism studies and events tourism literature offering insights into the diverse motivations for, and barriers to, attending the predominantly lesbian and separatist feminist festival, Michigan Womyn's Music Festival. Augmenting the literature on lesbian tourism, the article deploys a conceptualisation of festivals, such as gay pride, that seeks to contest dominant codes and norms as parties with politics. Using the data gathered from 222 qualitative questions, 10 interviews and 1 focus group, it explores the intertwining of music, feminist politics and temporality in understanding womyn's motivations in attending a separatist festival. Distinctively, it demonstrates how barriers to, and motivations for, attending festivals can be paradoxically mutually formative. In this way, it becomes possible both to question tick-box motivational frameworks and to explore festival times and spaces as (re)making tourist encounters. Thus, the article opens up considerations and theorisations of festival attendee' motivations looking to the complexities of experiences, motivations and time–space interactions.     

Islamic tourism: an empirical examination of travel motivation and satisfaction in Malaysia

The objectives of this study are to test the relationship between tourism motivations and tourist satisfaction, and to test how ‘Religion’ moderates the relationship. The variable ‘Religion’ is represented by the availability of Islamic norms and practices relevant to tourism at the destination. The results of the partial least square indicate that tourism motivations are significantly and positively related to tourist satisfaction. The results also showed that Religion significantly moderates the relationship between pull motivation and tourist satisfaction. However, the moderating effect of Religion on the relationship between push motivation and tourist satisfaction was not supported.     

Motivational determinates of creative tourism: a case study of Albergue art space in Macau

ABSTRACT

Creative tourism is a new genre of tourism eliciting active tourist participation in learning and experiences. This study explores tourists’ motivations for participating in creative activities, as well as their perceptions of authenticity following a visit to the Albergue Art Space located in Macau, SAR, China. Empirical results indicate that vernacular heritage, service quality and participatory experience are key determinates for developing creative tourism. Sightseeing, social contact, self-improvement and escape emerge as primary motivations for participating in creative activities. In addition, tourist perceptions of authenticity in the context of creative tourism encompass objective and existential components. This study proposes to incorporate aspects of participatory experience into creative tourism products.     

Identifying differences in willingness to pay due to dimensionality in stated choice experiments: a cross country analysis

This paper explores the influence of both cultural and socio-economic characteristics on the perception of complexity and cognitive load associated with stated choice (SC) experiments. Complexity is analysed in terms of five design dimensions which were systematically varied according to a macro experimental design. To study the influence of cross country differences on willingness to pay estimates, we combined datasets collected in Sydney, Santiago de Chile and Taichung city in Taiwan, all of them related to an equivalent route choice experiment. Several mixed logit models were specified and estimated; our results show that design dimensions do have an impact on the behavioural outputs of discrete choice models estimated on SC data. However, these influences seem to be data-specific, suggesting that the impact of design dimensions upon SC outcomes may be local and not necessarily transferable across different countries and cultures.     

Tourist satisfaction and beyond: tourist migrants in Mallorca

This exploratory study analyses the role of tourist experience, especially tourist satisfaction, in subsequent migration from the UK to the municipality of Calviá, Mallorca, Spain. An overview and commentary is provided of theory relating to both tourist satisfaction and migration. Through a series of elite interviews, in‐depth micro‐studies and a questionnaire, which provides a small quantitative component, it is established that the motivation given by tourist satisfaction can be recognised as a key catalyst for migration. Classic migration motivations cannot be entirely discounted, and the migration decisions are multi‐stage through time. But tourist satisfaction—and particularly the two satisfaction components of performance and emotion—is especially relevant in the micro‐perspective of migration decision‐making. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Tourism and Pilgrimage: Paying Homage to Literary Heroes

By exploring the experiences of visiting the grave of famous authors, this study highlights the place of literary tourism in the tourism pilgrimage literature. It is based on an observational study of visitors to the grave of Jean‐Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir in Paris. Analysis reveals that visitors were motivated by a desire for closeness, a wish to pay their respects and to acknowledge the influence on their life of the two writers. The study notes a strong parallel between the religious and the literary pilgrim and contributes to knowledge on the phenomenon of the secular pilgrimage. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Reflections on pilgrims' identity,role and interplay with the pilgrimage environment

This article critically analyses the evolving concepts of the identities and roles of pilgrims as well as how their interaction with the pilgrimage environment contributes to a better understanding of the religious journey in the postmodern society. The article concludes that the predominantly theoretical paradigm framing pilgrimage as a tourism phenomenon might be limited and downplays the complexity of the pilgrims' experience nowadays. Alternatively, it proposes to explore the experience in terms of the pilgrims' evolving identity and role based on two universes. The first explores the impact of exposure to different levels of mundane dimensions in everyday life; and the second unveils the possible influences of the Ego–Alter (pilgrim–pilgrimage environment) relationship on pilgrims' identities and roles. The theoretical review and discussion on these reflections develops an alternative experiential spectrum that looks at these identities and roles. This proposed spectrum is constructed by four pilgrim typecasts stretching from the ‘traditional pilgrim’ up to and including the ‘post-postmodern’ one. This spectrum allows a better understanding of the cohabitation of different pilgrim typecasts experiencing the pilgrimage environment simultaneously but with varying levels of religious engagement.     

The maxisum and maximin-maxisum HAZMAT routing problems

We design routes for transportation of hazardous materials (HAZMAT) in urban areas, with multiple origin-destination pairs. First, we introduce the maxisum HAZMAT routing problem, which maximizes the sum of the population-weighted distances from vulnerable centers to their closest point on the routes. Secondly, the maximin-maxisum HAZMAT routing problem trades-off maxisum versus the population-weighted distance from the route to its closest center. We propose efficient IP formulations for both NP-Hard problems, as well as a polynomial heuristic that reaches gaps below 0.54% in a few seconds on the real case in the city of Santiago, Chile.     

Does a Terroir Product Tell the Same Story to Tourists,Day‐trippers and Local Consumers? The Moderating Role of Variety‐seeking Tendency and Perceived Authenticity

The issue of segmentation of the culinary tourism market is central for local economic actors because many products and activities address several marketing targets, including tourists and residents. This research shows that the assessment of the attributes of a terroir cheese is not altered by the consumer's tourist status. In contrast, taking into account the underlying motivations behind culinary tourism, an individual variable (the variety‐seeking tendency) and a variable related to the product (its perceived authenticity) appear as relevant segmentation criteria for such a culinary tourism product. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Marginal places and tourism: the role of Buddhist centers in Italy

Religious tourism in Italy has always been an attractor at an international level. For many centuries, it has been entirely represented by the Christian pilgrimage to St. Peter’s Basilica. In recent decades, however, the religious scenery has changed deeply, and now includes even non-Christian religions and spiritualities. In this paper we compare two (very different) Buddhist centers, both located in places of Italy where tourism is not (or is no more) a significant component of the local economy. Buddhist centers are increasingly becoming popular tourist attraction: our purpose is to investigate to what extent and under which conditions they can be actors of local tourism development. The most significant of these conditions seems to be the nature of the center itself, ranging from a hermitage relatively unconcerned about any quantitative development, to a structure where spiritual ends are reconciled both with expansion and with economic integration within the local community.     

The impact of daily tour service quality on tourist satisfaction and behavioural intentions in an island context: a study on tours to Isla de la Plata,Ecuador

ABSTRACT

This study assesses the impact of daily tour service quality on tourist satisfaction and behavioural intentions in an island context. Using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM), the analysis of data collected from 195 participating in a daily tour to Isla de la Plata (Ecuador) showed that all the services examined (transportation by boat, food and beverage, tourist guide and visits) had a significant direct impact on tour satisfaction, having the transportation the highest impact. Moreover, the indirect effect of the daily tours services on behavioural intentions mediated by the satisfaction with the tour was also significant.     

Neopagan Pilgrimages in the Age of the Internet: A Life Changing Religious Experience or an Example of Commodification?

This paper focuses on the phenomenon of Neopagan ‘pilgrimages’, which are advertised on the Internet and directed to various ancient sacred sites in Greece and in the Mediterranean Sea. After showing how travellers to Greece in the Modern Age have been inspired by classical myths and have often represented their trips as ‘pilgrimages’, the paper examines how Neopagans, women belonging to the Goddess Spirituality Movement, use travels to ancient sacred places as a way to reconstruct their own identity. Therefore, the perception and representation of the tourist journey as ‘pilgrimage’ obscures the reality of the commodification of religious experiences, in a globalised context in which different consumers ‘buy’ different experiences of ancient Greece.     

Spiritual well-being and restorative experiences: A case of a religious shrine

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the economic value of various functions of pilgrimage sites in the modern ere as pilgrimage became popular. To survey was conducted with pilgrims and tourists visiting the Solmoe Shrine, the birth place of Father Andrew Kim, the first ordained priest of Korea, and is located in Dangjin City, South Korea. Conservative evaluation method based on real setting scenarios 2, willingness-to-pay (WTP) for preservation value of Solmoe Shrine was estimated at KRW141,366 ($105) a year per household or approximately KRW2.95 trillion ($2.188 billion) depending on WTP truncated mean. According to the results of the study, the psychological variables that influence the willingness to pay were the restorative experience and spiritual well-being. These results can be seen that in the modern era, pilgrimage is greatly linked not only to religious purposes but also to personal health.     

Energy and transformation in alternative pilgrimages to Catholic shrines: deconstructing the tourist/pilgrim divide

In recent years an increasing number of travelers have visited sites considered ‘power places’, with the intention of tapping into their energy and the experiential transformation and healing associated with such sites. This article is based on fieldwork among pilgrims influenced by the international Goddess movement, visiting Catholic shrines in Southern Europe; the analysis reflects an ethnographic perspective on how these pilgrims conceptualize their journeys. Their approach to sacred sites is by no means unique but rather the expression of an engagement both with pilgrimage and tourism, one in which both the notions and experiences of energy and transformation play key roles. I will argue that in the context of these sacred journeys, the use of an energy language to make sense of travel experiences and the emphasis on personal transformation allow the pilgrims to deconstruct oppositions implicitly associated with the tourism/pilgrimage dichotomy [Badone, E. (2004) Crossing boundaries: Exploring the borderlands of ethnography, tourism and pilgrimage. In E. Badone & S. R. Roseman (Eds.), Intersecting journeys: The anthropology of pilgrimage and tourism (pp. 180–189). Urbana: University of Illinois Press].     

Low cost carriers in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region: Emergence and barriers to development

This paper investigates the development of low cost carriers (LCCs) in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region from a broader perspective. We use passenger volume data at the airline and flight segment levels to illustrate the development of LCCs in the region; we conduct a structured comparison of the actual business model characteristics of the MENA-based LCCs to assess their adherence to the archetypical LCC business model; and we compile the key barriers to LCC growth in MENA from the literature.We find that the overall market share of LCCs in MENA is still below the world average – despite high growth in recent years. The presence of LCCs varies considerably between MENA countries and route groups. The more upscale, “Jetblue”-style business model, where passengers benefit from additional, complementary services or product characteristics, prevails. Political tensions, adverse regulations and lower levels of liberalization compared to Europe or North America negatively affect LCC development in many MENA countries. While low middle-class proportions appear to be a challenge for low cost business models, Asian diaspora and tourism – from beach holidays to pilgrimage – seem to induce additional demand.