Discovery, Connection, Nostalgia: Key Travel Motives Within the Senior Market

Document Type

Article

Department or Administrative Unit

Management

Publication Date

2004

Abstract

The senior travel market may be segmented and profiled with a combination of psychological characteristicstravel motives; travel risk perceptions; cognitive age-as well as demographic characteristics. Activities-age, a measure of cognitive age related to the age a person identifies with while enjoying travel activities was able to discriminate between the four travel-motive segments identified with a large survey of the senior market: discovery and self-enhancement, enthusiastic connectors, reluctant travelers and nostalgic travelers. While nostalgia is an important travel motive for the largest segment of senior travelers, the cognitively younger, wealthier, healthier and better educated seniors are motivated to travel for discovery and self-enhancement. Each of the four travel segments provide travel marketers with opportunities for product and service development.

Comments

This article was originally published in Journal of Travel & Tourism Marketing. The full-text article from the publisher can be found here.

Due to copyright restrictions, this article is not available for free download from ScholarWorks @ CWU.

Journal

Journal of Travel & Tourism Marketing

Link to Full Text

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