TY - JOUR

T1 - From Quantity to Quality: Capturing Higher Spending Markets through a Segmentation of Travelers’ Expenditure

AU - Rubina Nava, C.

AU - Osti, Linda

AU - Zoia, M.G.

PY - 2023/1

Y1 - 2023/1

N2 - Many tourism destinations aim at expanding their market share of high spending visitors by shifting from quantity to quality. The COVID-19 pandemic has forced the introduction of social distancing requiring hotspots and mass destinations to reduce their capacity. This paper proposes a two-step approach for identifying top spending European countries over time, distinguishing between leisure and business travelers. The methodology employs the Country Product Dummy index with a hierarchical clusterization, enriched by a convergence analysis. This approach overcomes general shortcomings of descriptive statistics and cluster analyses directly applied to raw expenditure data. The outcomes of this analysis provide a detailed picture of the European travelers’ expenditure across time and geographical area. The identified top spending countries of leisure and business travelers can be targeted through ad-hoc marketing campaigns and specific packages for privileging quality tourism and planning economic recovery in the post-COVID-19 reopening phase, while shifting away from mass tourism.

AB - Many tourism destinations aim at expanding their market share of high spending visitors by shifting from quantity to quality. The COVID-19 pandemic has forced the introduction of social distancing requiring hotspots and mass destinations to reduce their capacity. This paper proposes a two-step approach for identifying top spending European countries over time, distinguishing between leisure and business travelers. The methodology employs the Country Product Dummy index with a hierarchical clusterization, enriched by a convergence analysis. This approach overcomes general shortcomings of descriptive statistics and cluster analyses directly applied to raw expenditure data. The outcomes of this analysis provide a detailed picture of the European travelers’ expenditure across time and geographical area. The identified top spending countries of leisure and business travelers can be targeted through ad-hoc marketing campaigns and specific packages for privileging quality tourism and planning economic recovery in the post-COVID-19 reopening phase, while shifting away from mass tourism.

U2 - 10.1177/00472875211054568

DO - 10.1177/00472875211054568

M3 - Article

VL - 62

SP - 75

EP - 90

JO - Journal of Travel Research

JF - Journal of Travel Research

SN - 0047-2875

IS - 1

ER -