Tourism Practice Essay Questions And Answers Notes

Do tourist typologies have any relevance in the understanding of tourist motivation?

Introduction

Pearce (2005) stated that we need to avoid “the sin of homogenisation” when discussing the tourist, we should not merely generalise. However, theorists have been evaluating and considering the differences between tourists for many years and have looked into the type of tourist they can be categorised as – though to some extent this still generalises by placing tourists into one category or another – and what motivates individual tourists to undertake tourism activities. Throughout this essay I will look at tourist types from Cohen’s (1972), Plog’s (1974) and Pearce’s (1982) work before looking at tourist motivation including Pearce’s (1993) career ladder. From that I shall conclude how the two are interrelated, if in fact they are and to what extent typologies can help with the understanding of motivation.

Define/explain tourist typologies

Considerable work was done in the 1970’s in an attempt to understand tourists and classify them into a number of different typologies. It was thought that this typology research would be of use for market segmentation including marketing and promotion directed to the target market as well as with complex policy decision making such as tourism planning. Cohen (1972) undertook some of the earliest work on tourist typologies and suggested that tourists could be “classified on the basis of similar observable behaviours” (Foo, 2008). He outlined four different types of tourist that existed. Firstly, the organised mass tourist who preferred and sought out highly organised package holidays that has minimal contact with the host community. These tourists holiday within an environmental bubble. The independent mass tourist uses similar facilities to the organised mass tourist but also wants to break away from the norm and visit other sights not covered on organised tours in the destination. The explorer arranges their travel independently and wishes to experience the social and cultural lifestyle of the destination. Finally, the drifter does not seek any contact with other tourists or the organised tourism industry, preferring to live instead, with the host community. This type of classification however, is problematic as it does not take into account the increasing diversity of holidays undertaken and the different locations that are now open to tourists.

Just two years later Plog (1974) identified two opposite types of tourist at each end of a continuum. Allocentrics are tourists who seek adventure on their holidays and are prepared to take risks. As such they prefer holidays in more exotic locations and prefer to travel independently. At the other extreme are psychocentrics. These tourists look rather inwardly and concentrate their thoughts on the mall problems in life. On holiday they are not adventurous but prefer locations that are similar to their home environment. Such tourists may repeatedly return to the same destination where they have had a satisfying experience safe in the knowledge of the familiar. In between these two extremes Plog classifies three other types of tourists; near allocentric, midecentric and near psychocentric. The main problem with Plog’s typology is that both tourists and destinations change over time, for example a young adult may well be allocentric at certain stages in their lifecycle and more midcentric at other stages.

Ten years after Cohen, and basing his work on that of Cohen’s, Pearce (1982) developed 15 tourist roles which by using statistical techniques he identified five major tourist types from; environmental, high contact, spiritual, pleasure first and exploitative travel. In more recent times, Gibson and Yiannakis (1992) derived a comprehensive classification of leisure tourists which suggested that individuals enact preferred tourist roles in destinations which provide an optimal balance of familiarity-strangeness, stimulation-tranquillity and structure-independence. In other words some types of tourist on holiday seek unusual environments where others seek familiar ones, some want peace and quiet where others want activity and some require an organised holiday or itinerary whereas others do not.

There is considerable overlap between the works of a number of theorists with Yiannakis and Gibson (1992) suggesting where some of Pearce’s (1982)15 tourist roles would fit in within their classification. For example they claimed that Pearce’s archaeologist and seeker prefer strange environments in their strangeness-familiarity classification whilst sports tourists prefer familiar environments.

Define/Explain tourist motivation

Like tourist typologies, tourist motivation has been a subject researched and studied in depth by theorists and equally it is important from a management perspective as it enables market segmentation and the planning and development of destinations. Mountiho (1987) argued that motivation is “a state of need, a condition that exerts a push on the individual towards certain types of action that are seen as likely to bring satisfaction”. Motivations are the hidden values of forms of tourism, not simply the travel motives which include anything from business to health. Maslow’s (1943) hierarchy of needs is perhaps the earliest illustration of motivations that can be linked to tourism, though perhaps loosely. Maslow (1943) argued that our individual needs fall into five broad categories (physiological needs, safety needs, belonging and love needs, esteem needs and self-actualisation needs). Maslow suggested that these five categories formed a hierarchy beginning with lower order physiological needs moving through to higher order self-actualisation needs. This is based on the premise that each of the needs expressed in a category would be satisfied before the individual sought motivation for the next category of need.

Several tourism researchers have applied Maslow’s model in the context of tourism...

Buy the full version of these notes or essay plans and more in our Tourism Management and Development Notes.