Segmenting East Asian Tourists to Greece by Travel Motivation

This study compares the push and pull motivations of East Asian (Japanese, Chinese and Korean) tourists who visit Greece and also proposes market segmentation based on travel motivations that transcend the national boundaries of those countries. Four main push factors were identified: “Knowledge”, “Ego-enhancement”, “Escape & Relaxation” and “Novelty”. Similarly, four pull factors were also identified: “Leisure, shopping and safety”, “Variety and cost”, “Culture & heritage” and “Travel arrangements and facilities”. Cross-cultural differences were found regarding the importance of travel motivations. Chinese tourists scored higher than other nationalities for almost all motivation categories. Although the cross-cultural differences are important, this study proposes another way to tackle the market segmentation by conducting an international segmentation based on inherent similarities across different nationalities of travelers. Three segments emerged from that analysis with the “Novelty Seekers” to be the largest followed by the “Want-it-All” and the “Lowly Motivated”.     

Travel motivations and destination choice: A study of British outbound market

Abstract

Knowledge of people's travel motivations and its association with destination selection plays a critical role in predicting future travel patterns. The objectives of this study were to uncover the underlying push and pull factors of motivation associated with British outbound pleasure travelers as well as to identify key motivational factors that have significant effects on destination choice. Six push factors and five pull factors were found. “Knowledge seeking” and “cleanliness & safety” were perceived as the most important push and pull factors respectively. The results of logistic regression analyses snowed that the British tend to visit the U.S. for “fun & excitement” and “outdoor activities,” Oceania for “family & friend togetherness,” and Asia to seek a “novel experience.” The findings of differential motivational factors across seven destinations suggest that a destination can capitalize on its strengths with an optimal combination of push and pull factors to attract and retain the British travelers.     

A Path Analytic Model of Visitation Intention Involving Information Sources,Socio-Psychological Motivations,and Destination Image

Abstract

This study develops and tests a model to examine the organization of informational, motivational, and mental constructs on visitation intention in a path analytic framework. The findings indicated that variety (amount) and type of information sources used and socio-psychological travel motivations determine travelers' perceptual/cognitive evaluations that, in turn, form their affection (feelings) about tourist destinations. A traveler's intent to visit, then, is determined by a combination of perceptual/cognitive and affective evaluations, information sources used, and travel motivations. However, destination image (cognition and affect) appeared to mediate the relationship between visitation intention and stimuli (information sources) and consumer factors (socio-psychological travel motivations). Theoretical and practical implications of the study are discussed and future research areas are suggested to better understand travelers' destination selection process.     

Motivation,Participation, and Preference: A Multi-Segmentation Approach of the Australian Nature Travel Market

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to develop a typology of nature travelers based on their motivations, activity participation, and destination preferences. A secondary analysis from the Pleasure Travel Market Survey for Australia (1994) was used. The results indicated that the proposed ‘motivation-participation-preference’ multi-segmentation bases could classify Australian nature travel market into six segments. They were ‘Physical Challenge Seekers,’ ‘Family Vacationers,’ ‘Culture & Entertainment Seekers,’ ‘Nature Tourists,’ ‘Escape & Relax Vacationers,’ and ‘Indifferent Travelers.’ Travelers among groups exhibited significant differences in terms of their so-ciodemographics, trip-related characteristics, and travel philosophies. Implications of the findings are discussed.     

Travel Motivation,Destination Image and Visitor Satisfaction of International Tourists After the 2008 Wenchuan Earthquake: A Structural Modelling Approach

This study investigates the relationships between travel motivation, destination image and overall satisfaction of international tourists visiting Sichuan province after the great Wenchuan earthquake of 2008. Did the earthquake influence tourist’ motivations for visiting Sichuan either positively or negatively, and did the earthquake affect their image of the province as desirable travel destination? Survey data collected from 346 international tourists in Chengdu, the provincial capital, revealed that respondents were primarily motivated by Sichuan's traditional attractions – its scenery and the giant pandas native to the area rather than by the earthquake. Structural equation modelling revealed a statistically significant relationship between travel motivation and overall visitor satisfaction, as well as relationships between travel motivation and types of destination image. Furthermore, both positive and negative destination images seem to have an effect on overall satisfaction. This study implies that international tourists to Sichuan tend to visit for its scenery and wildlife; the 2008 earthquake has had little effect on their travel motivations and destination images; and these visitors hold positive images of the province.     

Exploring Tourist Perceived Value: An Investigation of Asian Cruise Tourists' Travel Experience

The present study explores Asian cruise travelers' perceived value of the travel experience and the effect of perceived value on satisfaction and behavioral intention. To measure Asian travelers' multi-dimensional perceived value, a cognitive-affective perceived value model was utilized. Survey items were adapted from cruise travel attribute items and SERV-PERVAL scales. Exploratory factor analysis was performed to identify travelers' cognitive and affective perceived value. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was conducted in order for researchers to examine how tourists' multi-dimensional perceived value construct affected travelers' satisfaction and behavioral intentions. Statistical results showed that Asian cruise travelers have four sub-dimensions of cognitive perceived value: “facility,” “food & beverage (F&B),” “entertainment,” and “staff.” Affective perceived value was measured by emotional response measurement items. The current study indicated travelers' perceived value of the cruise experience affects travel satisfaction and travelers' behavioral intention.     

Analysis of Structural Equation Model for the Student Pleasure Travel Market: Motivation,Involvement, Satisfaction,and Destination Loyalty

Greater understanding of the model that plays a role in attracting certain visitor segments thus allows travel businesses to develop marketing strategies. This research analyzes an empirical model including push motivations, pull motivations, cognitive involvement, affective involvement, satisfaction, and loyalty to students' top domestic and international destinations. Results suggest push motivations are a good predictor of pull motivations, which in turn are considered a good predictor of cognitive involvement. Cognitive involvement is a good predictor of both affective involvement and satisfaction. Affective involvement is a good predictor of satisfaction. This study also confirms the significant association of satisfaction with destination loyalty. Hence, the proposed model provides a good quality of theoretical framework to positively predict travel demand toward domestic and international destinations.     

Segmentation by motivation for rural tourism activities in The Gambia

In The Gambia, as in many other African countries, rural areas rarely profit from the turnover earned in the country's tourism sector. In academic and political literature, however, rural tourism is frequently identified as a diversification strategy that may trigger local economic development in remote communities. To promote rural tourism development, further knowledge is required to understand why tourists are motivated to engage in distinct tourism market segments. In this study, survey data was collected from 450 tourists in The Gambia using a self-administered questionnaire. The questionnaire was constructed to identify the key characteristics and motivations of tourists so that the significant market segments could be categorized and the (latent) tourist demand for rural tourism activities could be gauged. This study identified four distinct segments of tourists in The Gambia: heritage & nature seekers, multi-experiences seekers, multi-experiences & beach seekers, and sun & beach seekers. Drawing on our key findings, we conclude by identifying a development path that could diversify Gambia's tourism sector. The development path would also include event-based rural tourism initiatives that align with the motivations of the identified market segments and may additionally benefit rural communities by reducing economic leakage rates.     

Tourists' Motivations to Travel during Financial Crisis

This study aims to describe the motivations of tourists to travel during financial crises and to identify the impact of those travel motivations on the likelihood that tourists would travel during financial crises. The findings suggest short-distance destinations, novelty, and culture would motivate tourists during financial crises; but tourist recreation would deter them from traveling domestically. This study enriches the literature on the travel motivations of domestic tourists, particularly Thai tourists, to travel during financial crises.     

Aspects of Lifestyle Change in China: Motivations for Self-Drive Travel – A Chinese Domestic Market Perspective

China’s rapid economic growth in the last decades has triggered an explosion of private car ownership, which has brought about the increasing popularity of self-drive travel. This study aims to explore Chinese domestic travelers’ motivations for self-drive travel. By surveying 436 habitual self-drive travelers in China, the study extracted a 5-factor motivation model (comprising 24 motivation items). Based on the diverse motivations, respondents were clustered into three groups. The results contribute to a better understanding of Chinese self-drive travelers’ needs and preferences and could be beneficial for operators in related fields and authorities for their product design and operation.     

A taxonomy of creative tourists in creative tourism

This study aims to characterize creative tourists and their perceptions of creative experiences at tourism sites. Creative tourists are active co-creators of their experiences; hence, they should be treated as a heterogeneous group of co-producers who have subjective opinions and feelings toward their creative experiences. The existing literature suggests that a creative experience is constructed by ‘inner reflections’, which include not only ‘consciousness/awareness’, ‘needs/motivations’ and ‘creativity’, but also ‘outer interactions’ which refer to ‘environment’, ‘people’ and ‘activity’ (Tan, Kung, & Luh, 2013). However, how a particular mix of factors interact and define an individual's perceptions of a creative experience may vary among different types of creative tourists. Q methodology was used to reveal the tourists' inherent subjectivity of creative experiences with regard to the constructions of personal meaning. Five distinct groups of creative tourists were identified: novelty-seekers, knowledge and skills learners, those who are aware of their travel partners' growth, those who are aware of green issues, and the relax and leisure type. Each consists of a different composition of factors which can provide new insights into how different creative tourists construct their personal creative experiences at these sites.     

Self-determined travel facilitation with mental construal priming

In order to encourage people with mobility impairments (PwMI) to become active tourists, it is crucial to enhance their self-determination for overcoming travel constraints. This study proposes mental construal priming as a relatively efficient approach to facilitating self-determined travel pursuits among PwMI. Two pretest-posttest web-based experiments within the context of accessible and inaccessible service support the construal-facilitating effect on self-determined travel motivations, particularly through moderating the relationships between autonomy/competence satisfaction and self-determined motivations. This study offers theoretical implications by bridging construal level theory and self-determination theory, and introduces a new perspective of utilizing mindset intervention to cultivate travel motivations. The context-based adoption of different construal priming programs is recommended to maximize facilitation effectiveness.     

Road Travelers' Motivations and Loyalty: Train Versus Bus Services

ABSTRACT

Railroad and highway travel may differ not only in terms of their nature but also in terms of their appeal to travelers. Travelers may have different motivations to use either transportation mode in either inbound or outbound directions. Travelers may also demand different services or service traits of the provider in order to gain satisfaction in the short-term and/or become loyal customers in the long-term. This study uses a 2?×?2 design to compare train and a bus service between two cities 250 km apart in a country where these two means of transportation are equally essential. The study also compares the outbound and inbound routes in order to acknowledge additional differences in both the travelers' motivations and the customers' loyalty formation. The results show that travelers' motivations for choosing train or bus transportation differ based on whether they are leaving from or returning to the city that was the original point of departure. They also show that customers' long-term relationships with the provider significantly differ according to means of transportation and routes used. Characteristically, customers in the studied sample prefer train transport to leave and bus to return based on their idiosyncratic motivations of seeking value or money savings and their expectations of mutual loyalty. This research suggests practical consequences both for understanding travelers' motivations and customer loyalty formation and for managing policies regarding train and bus services competing for specific segments of travelers.     

Medical travel facilitator websites: An exploratory study of web page contents and services offered to the prospective medical tourist

The growing trend of traveling outside of one's country for medical services, commonly known as “medical tourism” is expected to continue to grow exponentially in the next ten years (Keckley, 2008). With multiple destinations from which to select, and available information representing this type of travel being of variable reliability, many prospective medical travelers turn to the use of a “medical tourism facilitator”, who perform a variety of trip coordination responsibilities for the medical traveler. These medical tourism facilitators, themselves a new phenomenon to support travel to various global regions, may operate within the traveler's home country or the destination region. This study explores the services offered on medical tourism facilitators' websites to the prospective traveler. Through the application of correspondence analysis, it was discovered that differences in both website content and in services offered varied by the continent upon which the facilitator operated. With little yet known as to the motivations of a medical traveler in the selection of a specific destination, these discovered differences may be a first insight into regional differences that may play a role in such destination selection.     

Korean Outbound Tourism: Pre-Visit Expectations of Australia

Abstract

In this study Pearce's “Travel Career Ladder” concept was applied to a sample of South Korean tourists to examine motivations for travel to Australia as a holiday destination. Also, focus group interviews were conducted in Korea to assess visitor expectations, motivations and images of Australia. The initial findings from this study indicate that Koreans are primarily motivated to travel to Australia for the chance to experience natural environmental settings. Some aspects of Australia (e.g., Aboriginal history and culture) are little known in Korea but have the potential to attract Korean visitors. The results of this research may enable more effective marketing to Koreans by providing an insight into the most appropriate promotional content and information sources.     

Analysis of motivation,travel risk,and travel satisfaction of Taiwan undergraduates on work and travel overseas programmes: Developing measurement scales

Travel is an increasingly important aspiration for young people around the world. In order to explore other places and their culture, and to relax, have fun, and save money to travel, combining overseas work and travel is now a popular young students' activity. Such student travel has a history of 30 years and in 2011 7 countries have permitted a work and travel visa to be issued to Taiwanese students. Every year almost over 3000 Taiwanese young people travel overseas, especially to the United States of America, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and Japan, to both work and travel in those countries. There they can improve their language skills, expand their international viewpoints and experience different cultures. This study looks at the relationships between work and travel overseas motivations, perceived travel risk and satisfaction for young people, and uses a sample of 151 Taiwanese undergraduates working and traveling in the U.S.A., Australia and New Zealand during 2008 to 2010. Three hypothesized relationships are examined with reference to perceived risk, motivation and satisfaction and measurement scales are proposed.     

The development of an optimal multiple channel strategy model for travel agencies' tourism business excellence

Research explaining how respective reasons for multiple channel strategies emerge in the travel agency industry is lacking. The study addresses this problem by considering internal organizing motivations and external environment uncertainties, exploring prevalent channel selection and performance techniques, and setting up indices for an optimal channel strategy model useful to travel agencies. From qualitative in-depth interviews with 15 experts and quantitative surveys of 304 travel agencies, we found that environmental uncertainty and organizational motivation crucially affect the intention of multiple channel selection that results in expected channel performance. There is an imperative need for Taiwan's travel agency industry to have a multiple channel strategy model.     

Visitor attendance motivations at consumer travel exhibitions

This study identifies the major motivations of visitors for attending consumer travel exhibitions and segments visitors based on their motivations. The findings suggest that visitors to consumer travel exhibitions have multiple motivations: acquiring purchase information, being attracted by the theme, or being encouraged to visit by media coverage. Half of the visitors perceived travel fairs to be an important distribution channel through which they could get special deals on travel to desirable destinations (or at least sourcing information on travel). It seems likely that consumer travel show attendance may be closely linked with the individual leisure desires of the visitor. The study suggests two clusters: 1) Shopper cluster whose major motivation is purchasing and 2) Total Visitors whose motivation is to undertake an ongoing information search and attend seminars to maintain their awareness of new trends with the tourism industry.     

Targeting Rural Tourists in the Internet: Comparing Travel Motivation and Activity-Based Segments

This study aims to compare activity-based segmentation and travel motivation segmentation from the perspective of information search behavior and online use behavior by comparing segment heterogeneity. The data were collected from users of three Finnish rural tourism websites with 1754 completed and usable questionnaires to create segmentation solutions based on travel activities and motivations using hierarchical cluster analysis and then comparing the results. The results indicate that travel activities are more useful than travel motivations in finding heterogeneous segmentation solutions, making the travel activity segments more heterogeneous than travel motivation segments as regards their information search behavior and Internet use. The results suggest that in this era of Internet marketing, travel activities are a better segmentation base than travel motivations in order to target different market segments as activities form more heterogeneous segmentation solutions.