Lesson 4: Types of Travellers
Completion requirements
Unit 1
What Attracts Tourists?
Lesson 4: Types of Travellers
"All you need is the plan, the road map and the courage to press on to your destination." ~ Earl Nightingale
Reasons for travel are broadly categorized into 2 groups: business or pleasure.
Regardless of the reason that tourists begin their travel, all tourism destinations must address a few necessities, eg., accommodations, transportation, meals, and activities. Grouping the traveller into a category for travel helps direct the travel destination in meeting their specific needs. The most broad categories are business and leisure.
Click on the + signs below to view more information about Business Travel and Leisure Travel.
For a moment, let's focus on the business traveller.
Capturing the business travel market has a huge economic advantage. Firstly, business travellers typically do not spend their own personal money. Their employer pays the bills. To entice business executives to leave their home and families for work, travel, food, transportation, and accommodations are typically at a higher than average class, eg., business class flights have many more perks with a higher associated cost. Another advantage for the business traveller market is the ability to secure a large number of accommodations and food sales in a single event, eg., 200+ business travellers attending a single medical conference. For this reason, destinations will give special conference rates to secure the bulk bookings. Venues must ensure that they have adequately prepared meeting rooms, multimedia requirements, catering staff, and hotel rooms to meet the business class event expectations. As an added bonus for the destination, the business traveller often looks for add-on activities to do in their non-meeting time.
Next, let's look into the leisure traveller.
The leisure traveller is more economically reserved. The travel dollars come directly out of their personal hard earned savings. Individuals work hard for their money, sometimes saving for years to have enough funds to pay for a trip, so their travel dollars must meet their personal needs. One of the biggest influences on the leisure traveller is word of mouth, and specifically, the social media effect. Online review sites such as Trip Advisor have revolutionized leisure travel. Many travellers feel they can trust like-minded tourists' reviews more than that of the sales staff who receive commission pay based on their booking. Tourism businesses are increasingly recognizing this. In fact, review sites are so important to them, you will often see compensation such as a discount or free add-ons given to dissatisfied customers in an attempt to eliminate bad reviews. Destination staff monitor these sites regularly and paste comments to show their willingness to rectify a traveller's bad experience.