Determinants of Youth Travel Markets' Perceptions of Tourism Destinations

Abstract

The primary purpose of this study was to test the relationships between the importance of destination attributes, travel motivation, and perception of destination attributes for two youth markets: American and Australian. A path model was developed, separately for each market, to test for these relationships and to assess the similarities and differences between both models. Seven hundred and eight randomly selected American and Australian respondents were surveyed. The results suggest that in both samples there is a significant association between the importance of destination attributes and internal and external motivation, which also have significant associations with perception of destination attributes. The importance of destination attributes influences perception of destination attributes through the mediating effects of travel motivation. The study implies the need for tourism researchers to test the developed model across different international tourist markets.