RESEARCHING TOURIST BEHAVIOR & QUALITY AND TOURIST SATISFACTION

All these changes mean that tourist behaviour itself has experienced over the past ten years a level
of change that can truly be called ‘revo- lutionary’. Unfortunately, tourism academics have not been
able to keep up with these rapid changes in the tourism market and tourist be- haviour. There has
been a growing interest in consumer behaviour by

tourism researchers but there are still major gaps in our knowledge, which is a challenge for future
researchers.

The subject of tourist behaviour and how it is changing is also now more relevant than ever for
students, as they will be the future man- agers and policy-makers who have to grapple with the
effects of the changes in behaviour.

When writing this new edition we have tried to retain much of the core text because the main
principles, issues and techniques of con- sumer behaviour in tourism remain constant. We have even
kept some of what we wrote in the late 1990s but it now has an almost ‘historic’ interest. However,
we have also thoroughly updated the data in the text and have added new sections on important
topics, for example, the Internet and terrorism. We have updated some case studies, revised others
and added a number of new ones.

We must always remember that without tourists there can be no tourism, and recognize that if we
are to manage tourism effectively, we need to understand tourists and their behaviour. We hope
this book will help develop such understanding and that it will stimulate aca- demics and policy-
makers to conduct more research in this field which is still underdeveloped.

Happy reading!

John Swarbrooke and Susan Horner

The problem with the academic disciplines of consumer be- haviour, however, is that while many
general models of con- sumer behaviour have been advanced, there has been little empirical research
conducted in order to test these models against actual behaviour patterns. This is especially true in
the tourism sector where research on consumer behaviour is very much in the early stages of
development. Despite a lack of empirical research, however, there have been several ex- amples of
models of consumer behaviour in tourism which have been suggested. It is important that, in this
book, we consider these models and consider the stage which the de- velopment of the subject has
reached. This will allow us to identify further areas of research and will offer the reader some
judgements as to how useful the research is to date for the application to practical marketing
activities.
Consumer behaviour is a fascinating but difficult subject to research. This statement is particularly
relevant in the tourism field, where the decision to purchase by a consumer is of emotional
significance. Purchase of a holiday, for exam- ple, involves the consumer in a large spend. The
holiday that the consumer buys will probably provide the consumer with the major highlight of the
year – a chance to escape from work and grey skies and to revitalize the spirit. Consumers are
influenced in their decision-making processes by many internal and external motivators and
determinants when they choose products. It is very difficult to research how these many moti- vators
and determinants affect the consumer when they are making their choices. They may be affected in
different ways, according to the type of product or service that they are purchasing. The experience
of purchasing a holiday, for example, will be very different from the ex- perience of purchasing an
everyday food item in a supermarket. It is likely to take much more time and involve more careful
consideration and selection, particularly as the purchase of a holiday usually involves a high
proportion of income.