Segmenting tourists by expenditure patterns: an instrument for enhancing tourism economic benefits on a Portuguese World Heritage site

• Jaime Serra ^[1] ; Joana Lima ^[1] ; Maria do Rosário Borges ^[1] ; Noemi Marujo ^[1] ; Ana Maria Ferreira ^[1]
  1. [1] Universidade de Évora

     Universidade de Évora

     Senhora da Saúde, Portugal

     
• Localización: Revista Turismo & Desenvolvimento, ISSN 1645-9261, Nº. 27-28, 2, 2017 (Ejemplar dedicado a: INVTUR 2017 Intl' Conference), págs. 117-119
• Idioma: inglés
• Enlaces
  • Texto Completo Ejemplar
• Resumen

  • Tourism is an activity with high potential for stimulating the development of local economies, with different types of visitors having distinct environmental, social and economic effects on destinations (Lundie, Dwyer, & Forsyth, 2007; Nickerson, Jorgenson, & Boley, 2016). Notwithstanding, there is a research gap on strategies aimed at maximizing the economic relevance of tourism for local tourism destinations using market segmentation, based on visitors’ daily expenditure level at the destination, as a starting point (Lima, Eusébio, & Kastenholz, 2012). This gap becomes more evident when we refer to World Heritage Sites (WHS) destinations (Amir, Osman, Bachok, & Ibrahim, 2016). This study presents the results of the tourist market segmentation of a Portuguese municipality - Évora, a UNESCO’s WHS, located in Alentejo. The study aims to identify the homogenous groups of visitors that prevail in a WHS destination based on expenditure patterns and furthermore at contributing to the development of marketing strategies to enhance the economic development of this cultural destination.