Understanding barriers to leisure travel: Tourist fears as a marketing basis

Abstract

The usefulness of investigating fears tourists associate with leisure travel as basis for strategic and operational marketing is investigated. Tourism-related fears are elicited from the tourism marketplace to gain insight into the precise risks today's tourists perceive. Heterogeneity of respondents with regard to these risk perceptions is investigated in the context of domestic and overseas travel. Distinctly different patterns of perceived risks emerge for different destination contexts as well as sub-segments of tourists. This knowledge could form a good basis for optimizing marketing communication messages to address tourists' concerns more effectively.