Travel Reference
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couples with children. 4) Full nest II: growing fami-
lies with dependent children. 5) Full nest III: older
married couple with dependent children. 6) Empty
nest: older married couple with no children at
home. 7) Elderly: senior citizen, company of other
older people. 8) Solitary survivors: widows, widow-
ers. The choice of trip activities for each group may
vary because of the characteristics of family itself.
Bachelor and young couples group may choose to
join adventurous activities as they are young and
eager to discover something new as well as they has
less commitment compared to family with children.
Growing family such as full nest II may be choose
leisure activities compared to others as they are
travel with their children. Their choice of activities
may be based on their children's decisions and to
suit their preferences, parents may consider visit-
ing destinations such as theme park and wildlife
zoo. Empty nest and elderly group may choose to
travel for heritage and nature tourism rather than
leisure tourism compared to full nest. The study
by Lawson (1991) and (Hong et al., 2005) has shed
light into better understanding of family tourists
behaviour. Meanwhile, Jang and Wu (2006) studied
behaviours of senior tourists. According to them,
among travel motives of senior travellers was to
seek for knowledge and intellectual enrichment by
visiting natural and historical sight. Whereas, travel
expenditure for families with children mostly fall in
leisure activities (Hong et al., 2005).
the issues. Demand typology is focused on destina-
tions chosen, travel characteristics, travel motiva-
tions, and tourist's behaviour while supply typology
focus on characteristics of the destination area in
terms of the form and extent of supply needs tour-
ism development in the area. Conceptually, Cohen
(1972, 1979) was the first researcher who subdi-
vides tourists into a group of different categories.
As assert by Cohen conceptual descriptions, tour-
ists can be divided based on their degree of insti-
tutionalization and how to differentiate between
the drifter, the explorer, the individual mass tourist
and the organized mass tourist whereas how tour-
ist react during their travels is therefore determined
by the orientation of spiritual or cultural attributes
which can be located within or outside their normal
region (Arnegger, Woltering & Job, 2010).
One of the current tourist's typology that exists
today is the one used for medical tourism. Medical
tourists are unlike the other type of tourist since
they are seeking activities according their interests
rather than choosing destinations first. Instead,
they find a suitable destination after deciding on
what type of medical services they want (Bookman
& Bookman, 2007). Wongkit and McKercher (2013)
identified medical tourist typology by combining
the trip purpose and decision horizon dimensions.
This typology gives rise to four types of tourists:
dedicated medical tourist, hesitant medical tourist,
holiday medical tourist and opportunistic medi-
cal tourist. The dedicated medical tourist makes
decision to seek treatment as the main reason and
make it decision before departure as important for
holiday for pleasure. The hesitant medical tourists
are those who have intention to seek treatment but
did not make final decision until after arrival. The
holiday medical tourist is a tourist who also has
intention to seek treatment but identified holiday
as main purpose of vacation. Lastly, the oppor-
tunistic medical tourist is that person whose main
purpose is for vacation and only makes a decision
to undergo treatment once in the destination.
Tourist typology can also be expected to adopt
supply-sides approach in terms of market segmen-
tation (Arnegger et al., 2010). For example, Pearce
(2008) developed a generalized model of tourism
distribution emphasized on tourists need in term
of time, place, form and possession utilities, tim-
ing and location services required by distinguished
tourists segments as independent, customized
and package. Independent tourists are those who
favour choice, flexibility and spontaneity. They are
independently arranged of all or the majority of
their own travel often not directly from the provid-
ers at the destination and market based interme-
diaries. While customized tourists are those who
demand particular features that are not normally
included in standard packages and the same time
3 TOURISTS TYPOLOGY
Typology plays an important role in defining and
developing tourism industry as it divides data
of one or more attributes into different types by
putting data into groups according to how they are
similar. On the other hand, tourism also can be a
benchmark or a vehicle whereby host countries can
locate and present themselves as they would like to
be seen by others (Henderson, 2010). In order to
successfully manage tourism sector, it is fundamen-
tal to understand tourist type's thoroughly. Past
researchers grouped tourists by identifying their
common characteristics in responding to a certain
situation to gain useful knowledge to assure the
objectives and goals while trying to satisfy tour-
ists' needs (Jafari 1989, Wickens, 2002; Marwijk
& Taczanowska, 2006). Instead of treating tourist
as a homogenous group, typology also reflects the
multiplicity of tourist experiences, motivations and
value which given some space for the family to be
the subject of typologies as past research tend to
develop typologies based on individualistic figure
only with no emphasis of families characteristics.
The development of tourist's demand and supply
typologies provides useful information to address
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