Abstract
Short break trips in urban destinations are clearly increasing, and this fact has implications for destinations linked to the different length of stay segments. Thus, this paper analyses the duration of the stay in relation to motivation, satisfaction, image, repetition and recommendation of leisure tourists in an urban destination. The main contribution of this article is to highlight the differences and similarities between the behaviours of short and long breakers for the constructs mentioned, not developed until now. The theoretical model is validated using a structural equation modelling methodology. The sample size is 10,953 tourists visiting the city of Barcelona, relevant for its increasing tourism appeal. Results confirm that differences and similarities are found for those tourist segments. By way of example it is worth mentioning that the repeat visits have a negative effect on tourists’ recommendation, in particular in the case of long break as compared with short break tourists.
Highlights
Two significant trends of the last decade have been the growth of the capacity of attraction of urban centres, with the so-called city break (Dunne, Flanagan & Buckley, 2011), and the reduction of tourists’ stay at the destinations (Alegre, Mateo & Pou, 2011)
This paper analyses the duration of the stay in relation to motivation, satisfaction, image, repetition and recommendation of leisure tourists in an urban destination
Among the factors that have contributed to this increase of tourist activity in Europe we can highlight the phenomenon of low cost travel, the increased number of trips and especially of short trips or short breaks, the changed perception of cities as attractive tourist destinations, and the Internet as a tool for information, planning and organisation of travel, among others (Dunne, Flanagan & Buckley, 2010)
Summary
Two significant trends of the last decade have been the growth of the capacity of attraction of urban centres, with the so-called city break (Dunne, Flanagan & Buckley, 2011), and the reduction of tourists’ stay at the destinations (Alegre, Mateo & Pou, 2011). We must mention the importance of research to demonstrate the relationships of recommenddation with other constructs Researchers such as Kozak (2001), Kozak & Rimmington (2000) and Yoon & Uysal (2005), consider it proven that satisfaction is an indicator of tourists’ intention to recommend to others, so a satisfied tourist is more likely to repeat and recommend his/her positive experience of the destination to family and friends (Chi & Qu, 2008). The causal model proposed analyses the relationships of motivation, satisfaction, image, repeat visits and recommendation with the principal contribution of using the length of stay (short break and long break) as tourists’ segmentation variable
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