Economics of service sector

2.2 Tourists’ Profiles and Lifestyles

Turismo en Teoría

For long holiday tourism has been in the grip of economic thinking and sociological research. On this webpage a more balanced view is maintained on the focal centre of tourists' activities: tourists themselves and their encounter with their holiday destination. Tourists take what is given to them and then turn it into their own ends; it is these ends what is of our primary interest and more than 25 articles on this site are about just that: the tourists' tourism.

Under the heading "Tourism" a new article has been added on Climate Change (July, 2020)

and also under the heading "Tourism" I have added a new article about Phenomenology and Tourism (Feb. 2020).

Turismo en Teoría» Sustainable Development (1) » Tourist Profiles and Sustainability » Tourists’ profiles and lifestyles

Posted in: Tourist Profiles and Sustainability on January 16, 2017

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Tourists’ Profiles and Lifestyles

1. Introduction

Trying to understand how tourists may behave in environments that are foreign to them is the object of this article and is of direct interests to those working in tourism or studying the subject. In this article it is explained, that with tourism activities, it is not about what a destination can offer or what tourists want from a destination, rather it deals with what at any given destination can serve each type of tourist. For some time now there have been a series of attempts to classify these ‘types’ of tourists for scientific as well as mercantile purposes. First of all a summary will be presented of the main stream developments regarding tourists’ profiles and their practical uses. Then a framework is presented that may help identify the ends tourists are after and how they can be matched at a destination.

2. Types of attractions and types of tourists

Tourism is about the encounter between tourists and their holiday destination and therefore it is this particular relationship we shall embark on. Tourists have their sensory intake from sources, called impact sources (q52). Similarly, other terms used are ‘toured objects’ (q110) or ‘experience clues’ (q169, q221, q66). Holiday tourists may look all the same with their bright-coloured clothing, expensive bags, cameras and funny caps, but in fact each of them experiences their vacation differently. When tourists enter their holiday destination local identities – cultural, sociological or natural – become associated with a significance they may have for tourists, whereby these identities turn into impact sources. In other words each tourist attributes some value to the impact source he or she is confronted with through association, recognition, comparison or imagination, among others. The question how we can differentiate among these attributed values leads to an inventory of tourists’ reactions to impact sources, that is to say to the results of their internal processing of sensory intake (q52): tourism deals with what at any given destination can serve each type of tourist, emphasizing the binomio tourist-destination as nucleus of the tourism activity. However, it would be erroneous to describe the encounter between destination and tourists just as a stimulus-response model. Once we interprete the encounter between destination and tourists as the convergence of emotions and activities being an existentially authentic process of interactions that may lead to experiences for both sides (q163), we shall be able to reach a much broader understanding of the phenomenon called tourism.

Impact sources themselves can also be differentiated on the basis of economic value among others. Tourism destinations consist of tourism services, such as hotels or restaurants, and also of tourist attractions, whereby a distinction can be made between the main attraction embodying the destination’s pulling power and side attractions taking advantage of the tourists’ presence. The former can also be called main impact source and the latter side impact sources (q52). For those attractions that are specifically developed or adapted for tourism, visitors will have to pay – in other words these sources represent economic value and are market dependent.

Next there is the general ambiance of a place, its normal daily life and cultural heritage, which is there anyway with or without the presence of tourists. The destination shares these impact sources or experience clues with tourists and hence they can be called Shared Impact Sources (q52) and they form the basic ingredient of any (tourism) destination. One characteristic is, that tourists do not pay for their use and therefore these do not represent direct economic value in tourism. In most cases locals do not receive money for the tourists’ presence either, other than from additional economic activities such as selling souvenirs or by improved local infrastructure, for example. It must also be clear, that main or side tourism attractions are just expressionsof a destination’s culture and not its embodiment. This is an important observation, since it is in contrast to most marketing techniques following the ruling economic approach, whereby marketing is restricted to these impact sources with economic value, while the rolling hills, neat little churches or the locals’ colourful dresses are used as background for the promotion of specific tourism attractions (q222). In marketing what is of importance to the locals – their daily life and surroundings – is pushed backstage (q225) to create the opportunity for visitors to spend.

Returning to the subject of the encounter whereby tourists convert local identities into impact sources – which may remain unnoticed or intensively lived – setting up a typology for tourists and their likes and dislikes prompts an additional question: any of such typologies may be used for a number of different purposes, each of which may require a specific starting point and development. Predicting what type of holiday or destination tourists may like is one reason for such typologies, another may be the design of a tourist attraction and there is also the direct interest of the marketing sector. It seems that predicting tourists’ destination preferences has received the bulk of research interests and more practical approaches have been designed for this purpose. Afterwards some more theoretical methods will be analyzed concerning the general disposition tourists have and which may serve more the marketing sector.

2A. The practical approaches

There seems to be a widespread consensus on tourist typologies concerning a continuum or linear scale with both extremes represented by few tourists only and the middle sections covering more than half of them. In 1972 Stanley Plog (q219) published one of the first of these scales, which later was to be called psychographs. One extreme of this scale refers to individualists people travelling alone or with a partner or friend. They will make their own itineraries and travel at their own rhythm and pace. They want to be active, tend to avoid typical tourist sites and have a keen interest in local populations and their culture. Volunteer work is a serious option and encounters with one’s self and with people from other cultures are of great importance. This is the idealistic end of the scale and since these people try to depart from the usual standards, we can call it the allocentric part of this lifestyle scale.

The other end of the scale gives us a profile of people who do not want any problems before or during their vacation, they like to have everything arranged for them and they want complete relaxation. They are concerned about their own bodies, and therefore their interests are in the fields of sunbathing, massages, spas or plastic surgery, just to mention a few. They have no particular interest in local people or their culture. We call this end of the scale the psychocentric one – see graph 1 at the end of this article.

Plog’s research led to the identification of three more intermediate groups for a total of five: psychocentrics – near psychocentrics –midcentrics – near allocentric – allocentrics. More recently the terminology has been changed and a sixth group has been added: traditionals – sightseers – journeyers – voyagers – pioneers – venturers (q81). Although over the years underlying concepts have been changed – and Plog has made many changes – the model remains a useful instrument, although thorouhly based on western style communities – especially from the USA. Updates of Plog’s tourists’ profiles description can be consulted at: http://besttripchoices.com/travel-personalities/quiz/

One has to keep in mind that the vast majortiy of tourists can be found somewhere in the middle between these extremes. In practice this means that the differences between tourists at either side of the centre are small and therefore difficult to measure. Additionnally, in an ever changing society increasingly moulded by globalizing effects these smaller differences may in practice be unnoticeable. Plog’s model therefore may be useful for specific societies – such as the USA – but for other continents its use may turn out to be limited. The psychographs are mostly about predicting tourist destination choices, but its usefulness for the design of tourist attractions is not clear.

From 1982 onwards Pearce (q156) started to publish a series of proposals around the concept of the roles tourists play in contrast to roles played by travellers. Pearce (q156) emphasizednot so much tourist behaviour itself, but rather a series of criteria for a taxonomic evaluation of typical tourist roles that in turn can be differentiated from other types of roles that are not typical for tourism, but which are related to travelling in general in some way or another. In his article published in 1987 (q223) he distinguished five travel concepts: Environmental – Close Encounter – Spiritiual – Pleasure – Business. It is about an approach whereby subjectivity is turned into a formal model, based on the presumption that there are typical tourist roles that differ from any another travel behaviour pattern. In the end it is about efforts to predict tourist behaviour and its impact on a destination environment. One of the criticisms that has been ventilated of Pearce’s concepts is that in more recent years the World Tourism Organization has widened considerably the definition of a tourist, which means that nowadays the relation tourist-traveller is seen in a different light undermining Pearce’s original concepts.

These two efforts to set up some kind of typology of tourists have been developed with direct practical use in mind. Next we shall look into two examples, whereby a sheer scientific approach forms the cornerstones for typology theories – the first based on socio-psychological grounds and the second with a clear psychological underpinning.

2.3. Organizing international tourism

The General Assembly of the United Nations proclaimed 1967 as the Year of International Tourism.

In 1975 the United Nations established the World Tourism Or­ganization (WTO). It emerged on the basis of the International Union of Official Tourist Organizations. The World Tourism Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations.

In 2005 the WTO General Assembly adopted the initials UNWTO in English and ЮНВТО in Russian. Before that there used to be a mix-up over WTO as the World Tourism Organization and WTO as the World Trade Organization.

UNWTO is the international intergovernmental organization. Ac­tually, it is a worldwide group of government travel organizations. It deals with promoting tourism throughout the world. It assists coun­tries in the development of national tourism.

The supreme body of UNWTO is the General Assembly. It holds its sessions every two years. The General Assembly elects the Gen­eral Secretary for the period of four years.

The World Tourism Organization cooperates with many United Nations agencies as well as government and non-government organi­zations.

Comprehension questions

1. When did tourist boom start?

2. When and where did the United Nations conference on interna­tional travel and tourism take place?

3. What was the year 1967 noted for?

4. When did the United Nations establish the World Tourism Organization?

5. Why did the WTO General Assembly adopt new initials of the organization in 2005?

6. What kind of organization is UNWTO?

7. What does UNWTO deal with?

8. What is the General Assembly of UNWTO?

9. What kind of organizations does UNWTO cooperate with?

THE OUTSET OF TOURISM IN RUSSIA

In the 18th century (1777) the first organized group of young men from noble families of Russia made the first trip abroad. They toured around Germany, Switzerland, Italy and France. The purpose of the tour was to get familiar with local universities and art galleries.

In the same 18th century the first guide books for leisure travel­lers on Moscow and St. Petersburg were published. Those manuals gave details of sights and art collections in the old and the new capi­tals of Russia.

Thomas Cook Company was very well-known in Russia. But the country's first national travel agency emerged in St. Petersburg in 1885. It was founded by L. Lipson. The travel agency got the name of the «Enterprise for Public Travel to All Parts of the World».

In 1901 the Russian Tourist Society came into being. However, only well-off noble people were its members.

After the October Revolution tourism in Russia involved common people, too. In 1929 the Society of Proletarian Tourism was created.

As a matter of fact, our reputable «Intourist» Joint-Stock Com- f) /| Q pany, which used to deal with international tourism during the Soviet period, was organized as long ago as in 1929, too.