Tourist typology

Tourist typologies reflect the diversity of individual motivations, styles, interests and values, and the subsequent differences often correlate with specific disciplinary research interests. The historical literature (Towner 1996) ascribes tourism primarily to wealth, or special status as in pilgrimage or war. As the scientification of tourism progressed, subsequent to the Second World War, typologies have increased in number and specificity. Plog (1964) identified a bell-shaped curve linking tourist motivation with destination, and described three travel personality types (see allocentric).

Typologies based on age and economy dominated during the 1970s, led by Cohen (1972) whose initial typology established two non-institutionalised roles as drifter and explorer, and two institutionalised types, organised mass tourist and individual mass tourist. Smith (1977) described the demographic aspects of tourism, in seven levels as numbers increased from explorers to mass and charter tourists, and their heightened impacts upon the host culture and local perceptions of tourism. Further, she defined five destination interests and motivations: ethnic, cultural, historical, environmental and recreational. This decade was also marked by the initial polemic between advocates of tourism as a phenomenon of pleasure-seeking tourists and those who search for authenticity (MacCannell 1973). Cohen (1979) summarised this diversity as five modes of touristic experience: recreational, diversionary, experiential, experimental and existential.

The decade of the 1980s extended typologies to include historic types such as the Grand Tour, north—south tourism, and long-term youth and budget travel, some of which is self-testing (Riley 1988). Graburn (1983) differentiated two types of contemporary tourism, as the annual vacation or holiday break and the rites of passage tourism associated with major changes in status such as adulthood or career changes. Environmental concerns generated numerous new tourist types related to 'appropriate' or alternative tourism, such as ecotourists or green tourists (Smith and Eadington 1992). Postmodernism has dominated the 1990s with renewed interest in levels of reality (Urry 1990), concerns with levels of carrying capacity and sustainability, and types of tourist lifestyle and behaviour experiences (Mazanec et al. 1998). Typologies also serve the industry, describing market niches as the basis for promotion and advertising according to the trip purpose, group character, transportation activities and interests

References

Cohen, E. (1972) 'Toward a sociology of international tourism', Social Research 39:164—82.
- (1979) 'A phenomenology of tourist experiences', Sociology 13: 179—202.

Graburn, N. (1983) 'The anthropology of tourism', Annals of Tourism Research 10: 9—33.

MacCannell, D. (1976) The Tourist: A .New Theory of the Leisure Class, New York: Shocken Books.

Mazanec, J., Zins, A. and Dolnicar, S. (1998) 'Analysing tourist behaviour with lifestyle and vacation style typologies', in W. Theobald (ed.), Global Tourism, Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann, 278—96.

Plog, S. (1974) 'Why destinations rise and fall in popularity', Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly, February.

Riley, P. (1988) 'Road culture of international long-term budget travellers', Annals of Tourism Research 15: 313—38.

Smith, V (1977) Hosts and Guests: The Anthropology of Tourism, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Smith, V. and Eadington, W. (1992) Tourism Alternatives: Potentials and Problems in the Development of Tourism, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Towner, J. (1996) An Historical Geography of Recreation and Tourism in the Western World 1540—1940, London: Wiley.

Urry, J. (1990) The Tourist Gaze, London: Sage.