Cultivating group-oriented travel behaviour to major events: assessing the importance of customer-perceived value,enduring event involvement and attitude towards the host destination

Abstract

Major events, such as the Olympics and Glastonbury music festival, attract tourists and result in increased consumer spending in host economies. The purpose of this study is to gain insights into the key determinants driving future intentions of travel consumers to participate in group-based travel to major events. An integrated theoretical model is empirically tested with 424 travel consumers who have had prior experience travelling in a group to a major event. The results substantiate the model showing that customer value perceptions of a past group-travel consumption experience conceptualised with multiple benefit dimensions has the largest relative effect on future intentions to engage in group-travel behaviour to major events, followed by attitude towards the host destination and enduring event involvement. The results provide managers with holistic insights into components that are used as the basis upon which group-travel consumers develop their choice behaviour which can be used to effectively cultivate more attendees to major events.