Profiling literary tourists: A motivational perspective

Abstract

This paper surveyed 620 respondents who visited Camel Xiangzi Museum (CXM) in Qingdao, China. The research extracted five factors from 18 travel motivations. The top three motivation factors are strongly associated with the author, his residence, and heritage. These three motivations are described as an acronym HAIR (heritage, author, intellectual, and residence). Based on the five motivation factors, the researchers grouped the visitors into three clusters: “Literary Motivated”, “Literary Inspired” and “Literary Neutral”. Literary Motivated visitors stayed comparatively longer than did the other two clusters. The cluster with the highest motivation factor scores also has the highest satisfaction. It was also found that the closer to CXM the visitors live, the higher the satisfaction. This paper contributes to the identification of a literary tourist typology to facilitate market segmentation and targeting.