Millennials travel more than any other generation and they account now for some 40 percent of Europe’s outbound travel. As Millennials travel peaks, the purpose of this paper is…
Abstract
Purpose
Millennials travel more than any other generation and they account now for some 40 percent of Europe’s outbound travel. As Millennials travel peaks, the purpose of this paper is to shed light on European Millennials, their characteristics and travel behaviors, and how their travel trends are shaping the present – and future – of the tourism industry.
Design/methodology/approach
The current study is based on content analysis of up-to-date academic publications and tourism industry reports.
Findings
The common characteristics and travel behaviors of Millennials drive four key tourism micro-trends: creative tourism, off-the-beaten-track tourism, alternative accommodation and fully digital tourism. Based on the growing importance of Millennials in global travel, these micro-trends are re-shaping supply and demand and transform the tourism and hospitality industries.
Originality/value
The study provides a novel understanding of Millennial travel, their characteristics and travel behaviors. The micro-trends identified are affecting destinations, hotels, attractions and other tourism businesses, as they re-define what tourists want and how they want it. Furthermore, these change drivers are expected to increase as Millennial travel continues to grow.
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The experience economy is characterized by the consumers’ search for emotions and memorable experiences through consumption. While the experience economy has a fundamental effect…
Abstract
Purpose
The experience economy is characterized by the consumers’ search for emotions and memorable experiences through consumption. While the experience economy has a fundamental effect on tourists’ decision-making and their consumer behavior, only a limited number of past studies have examined the relations between the experience economy and destination marketing campaigns. To extend the scope of the existing knowledge, this paper aims to explore the use of experience marketing in destination marketing campaigns.
Design/methodology/approach
The study conducts a qualitative case study analysis of six national tourism marketing campaigns, i.e. it examines the use of experience marketing in tourism campaigns and the use of the strategic experiential module as an analysis framework for destination marketing campaigns.
Findings
The findings reveal an influence of experience marketing on the examined marketing campaigns as destinations highlight the motifs of memorable experiences, engaging people’s senses and creating meaning. In accordance with the strategic experiential module, the campaigns analyzed shift the marketing focal point from the characteristics of the destination to the tourists’ experiences of sensing, feeling, thinking, acting and relating.
Originality/value
The conclusions of the study contribute both to scholars and practitioners, extending the present knowledge of the link between experience marketing and tourism marketing, illustrating the effect of experience marketing on destination marketing and shedding new light on the role of the experience economy and experience marketing in tourism marketing campaigns.
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Keywords
Srabanti Mukherjee, Atanu Adhikari and Biplab Datta
The tourism literature has focused only on destination branding; nonetheless, measuring the quality of a destination from the tourism point of view has been overlooked, especially…
Abstract
Purpose
The tourism literature has focused only on destination branding; nonetheless, measuring the quality of a destination from the tourism point of view has been overlooked, especially in the context of the emerging markets. This paper aims to focus on developing a scale measuring the overall quality of the tourist destinations.
Design/methodology/approach
With the help of extensive review of the literature, the study identified the key variables for measuring the quality of tourism destination in emerging markets. Thereafter, to determine the factor structure (purification stage) and assess the stability of the factor structure (validation stage), confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) has been conducted. A second-order CFA has been conducted to analyse the factor structure stability of the broad dimensions, namely, the quality of service, the quality of destination features and the quality of experience.
Findings
This research shows that the quality of tourism can be determined not only by the quality of destination features but also by the quality of service and the quality of experience one perceives from a destination. Together, these three dimensions and their various sub-dimensions form a valid scale to measure the overall quality of a tourist destination.
Practical implications
This study provides marketing managers an idea of the dimensions that affect tourist destination quality. They can now align the dimensions measuring destination quality with the destinations that they are marketing to tourists. This can add to the competitive advantage of any place brand.
Originality/value
This study has developed three distinct measurement scales for quality of experience, quality of destination feature and quality of services and validated the same with adequate data following appropriate scale development procedure. Through empirical research, the authors have integrated these three dimensions as the constructs for measuring the overall quality of tourist destinations. Hence, as a pioneering attempt, the authors have developed a scale to measure the quality of tourist destinations.