engleski

Identifying trends in tourism demand using longitudinal survey

Tourism demand is affected by various economic, social, cultural, political, technological and environmental trends. The key challenge for a successful tourism industry is its’ ability to recognize and adapt to underlying trends that affect tourists’ characteristics and expectations. Tourism destinations should adjust their strategies to market trends in order to maintain their competitiveness and deliver tourism products and services that stimulate tourists’ satisfaction and create loyal guests. Longitudinal research looks beyond the present manifestations of tourism activity. It is able to detect, examine and monitor the underlying mechanisms of change over time, and as such is a key issue for understanding tourism development. Although the number of longitudinal surveys in tourism is increasing, there is a lack of trend studies focusing on tourist behavior in a destination. This paper presents empirical research on a longitudinal survey of Croatian tourism demand characteristics and behavior in the 1987-2014 period. It gives guidelines to approach some methodological issues in application of longitudinal surveys, but also reveals some mega trends observed in Croatian summer tourism demand over almost thirty years of tourism development.

longitudinal survey, trends, tourism demand, tourists’ behavior

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