The concept of youth tourism as a distinct tourism market segment: A review of literature

Abstract

Youth tourism represents a significant and flourishing section of the tourism market and has become one of the fastest growing segments of international tourism. Youth tourism is highly popular in the developed nations and countries like India also hold tremendous potential for this segment. The youths showcase characteristics, needs, motivations and travel behaviour which is fairly distinct from the conventional travellers. However, despite the growing number of young tourists, researchers have generally neglected this segment. Thus, there is a lack of accurate information and statistics on such tourists. Understanding them and their needs is important for making better strategies for successful integration of young tourists in the overall tourism market. Nevertheless, the concept of youth tourism is comparatively very new in India. So, the present paper is an attempt to review the concept of youth tourism to have a better understanding of its recognition as a distinct tourism market segment. With limited studies in this field, this paper aims to review some relevant literature to gain insight into the meaning of youth and youth tourism, its important features and motivations etc. Such an understanding could provide useful inputs to academicians as well as various stakeholders and policy makers in their decision making.