Motivation for Pleasure Travel - Tourism: Principles, Practices, Philosophies - page 200

The beauty of an unspoiled
natural landscape is a
strong travel motivator.
These boys are on a rock
overlooking Victoria Falls in
Zimbabwe, one of southern
Africa's most famous
natural attractions.
PhotocourtesyofZimbabwe
TourismAuthority.

Current Market Research Practices

An understanding of travel motivation can also be approached by examining the kinds of motivation
questions asked in surveys of travelers. Basic passport questions that are standardized around the
world include only broad categories of motivation and are limited to such distinctions as Are you

traveling for business reasons, for holiday, to visit friends and relatives, for a convention, or for other
reasons?

''

''
More speci c market research questions are typi ed in the studies of or the

rewards of travel. It can be argued that these travel bene ts or rewards can be seen as the outcomes or
satisfactions linked to tourists

'' travel bene ts ''

motives for traveling.
In a typical study of travel bene ts, Loker and Perdue studied visitors to North Carolina and factor-
analyzed 12 bene t statements as a part of a survey of summer travelers to that state. 10 Using the two
statistical sorting procedures of factor analysis and cluster analysis, the researchers argued that there
were six segments of the market receiving different kinds of bene ts from their holidays:

'

Those who emphasized excitement and escape
2. Pure adrenaline/excitement seekers
3. A family- and friends-oriented group
4. Naturalists (those who enjoyed natural surroundings)
5.

1.

A group who emphasized the value of escape by itself

6. A group who enjoyed all bene ts

This kind of research, which has been repeated by several other scholars with slightly different
bene t groups emerging for different settings, represents a summary of travel satisfaction for a
particular destination. It is, thus, not a pure or clean analysis of travel motivation but helps us to
understand the importance of travel motivation in tourism studies by emphasizing that for travel
motivation analysis to be useful and meaningful it must be put in a context. Thus, while the list of