TY - JOUR
T1 - From Quantity to Quality: Capturing Higher Spending Markets through a Segmentation of Travelers’ Expenditure
AU - Rubina Nava, Consuelo
AU - Osti, Linda
AU - Zoia, Maria
PY - 2023
Y1 - 2023
N2 - Many tourism destinations aim at expanding their market share of high spending visitors by shifting from quantity to quality. The COVID-19 pandemic has forced the introduction of social distancing requiring hotspots and mass destinations to reduce their capacity. This paper proposes a two-step approach for identifying top spending European countries over time, distinguishing between leisure and business travelers. The methodology employs the Country Product Dummy index with a hierarchical clusterization, enriched by a convergence analysis. This approach overcomes general shortcomings of descriptive statistics and cluster analyses directly applied to raw expenditure data. The outcomes of this analysis provide a detailed picture of the European travelers’ expenditure across time and geographical area. The identified top spending countries of leisure and business travelers can be targeted through ad-hoc marketing campaigns and specific packages for privileging quality tourism and planning economic recovery in the post-COVID-19 reopening phase, while shifting away from mass tourism.
AB - Many tourism destinations aim at expanding their market share of high spending visitors by shifting from quantity to quality. The COVID-19 pandemic has forced the introduction of social distancing requiring hotspots and mass destinations to reduce their capacity. This paper proposes a two-step approach for identifying top spending European countries over time, distinguishing between leisure and business travelers. The methodology employs the Country Product Dummy index with a hierarchical clusterization, enriched by a convergence analysis. This approach overcomes general shortcomings of descriptive statistics and cluster analyses directly applied to raw expenditure data. The outcomes of this analysis provide a detailed picture of the European travelers’ expenditure across time and geographical area. The identified top spending countries of leisure and business travelers can be targeted through ad-hoc marketing campaigns and specific packages for privileging quality tourism and planning economic recovery in the post-COVID-19 reopening phase, while shifting away from mass tourism.
KW - clustering
KW - country product dummy index
KW - destination profitability
KW - quality tourism
KW - travelers’ expenditure
KW - clustering
KW - country product dummy index
KW - destination profitability
KW - quality tourism
KW - travelers’ expenditure
UR - http://hdl.handle.net/10807/189967
U2 - 10.1177/00472875211054568
DO - 10.1177/00472875211054568
M3 - Article
SN - 0047-2875
VL - 62
SP - 75
EP - 90
JO - Journal of Travel Research
JF - Journal of Travel Research
ER -