psychology of travel ppt

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The psychology of travel - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

The psychology of travel

Tourism – powerpoint ppt presentation.

• To show awareness of the factors motivating people to travel
• To clarify the relationship of needs, wants and motives.
• To explain the relation between Maslows hierarchy of needs and travel motivations listed in travel literature.
• Relief of tension
• Family togetherness
• Interpersonal relations
• Roots and ethnic
• Self-discovery
• Interest in foreign country
• Something that stimulates interest or causes a person to act in a certain way.
• Is the driving force that causes the flux from desire to will in life.
• Ex Hunger is a motivation that elicits a desire to eat.
• Physical motivators related to rest, sports participation, beach recreation, relaxing entertainment and other motivations directly connected with health
• Cultural Motivators include the desire to know about other countries examples are music, art, folklore, dances, paintings and religion
• Interpersonal motivators pertain to the desire to meet other people, visits friends or relatives, escape from routine, from family and neighbors.
• Status and Prestige motivators
• Concern ego needs and personal development.
• Included in this groups are trips related to business, conventions, study and pursuit of education.
• Enhances the ones recognitions and good reputation.
• This theory by Abraham Maslow in his 1943 work, A Theory of Human Motivation, explains that as humans meet basic needs, they seek to satisfy successively higher needs that occupy a set of hierarchy.
• Need is something that is necessary for organisms to live a healthy life.
• Want  is something that is desired. It is said that every person has unlimited wants, but limited resources.
• Motives something (as a need or desire) that causes a person to act.
• This pyramid of five levels represents human needs which Maslow further grouped into two as deficiency needs and growth needs.
• Deficiency needs are related to physiological needs while growth needs are related to psychological needs.
• The Maslow hierarchy of needs is an explanation of an individuals behavior.
• In tourism, every piece of information that would help the business owners, managers, and staff understand tourists behavior is important.
• This hierarchy of needs is used in the tourism industry in several ways.
• First, tourism experts also consider these different levels to be intrinsic factors that could drive a person to travel.
• For example, an individual may join a cruise because of his/her need for friendship. One of the attractions of joining a cruise is the many opportunities it provides its of meeting new people.
• The level of needs would provide tourism businesses a guide in understanding their travel market and thus advertise their products effectively.
• A cruise liner would emphasize in their advertisement the chances of meeting people instead of traveling to new places.
• Second, tourism businesses could come up with different facilities and services with features that attempt to address certain needs of tourists.
• Tourism businesses also uses them as their competitive edge over others. The hierarchy of needs guides them in coming up with specific service that they know would be important to their clients. It may not be a main attraction but it may also enhance tourist experience.
• For example, services that address needs of belonginess or esteem such as elite programs and frequent visitors program or simple tokens that make the guests realize that the tourism business knows them specifically.
• This model is developed by Philip Pearce.
• It attempts to explain individual behaviors on the basis of stages in a tourist life cycle which is said to be similar to an individuals experience of work.
• It is assumed that as the tourists become more experienced, they also become more proficient and effective.
• It is somehow similar to Maslow hierarchy of needs because the model also explains that tourists ascend only to higher needs once lower needs for a tourist experience are fulfilled.
• This model emphasizes that the choice of destination of a tourist is driven by two forces push and pull.
• The first force, push, pushes a tourist away (from home) and the second one, pull, is a region-specific lure that pulls a tourist towards a destination.
• The push refers to a general desire to go and be somewhere else, without specifying where that may be.
• These are the intangible, intrinsic desires of a tourist to go on vacation.
• Pull, on the other hand, refers to the tangible characteristics or attributes of a destination that are primarily related to its perceived attractiveness.
• This push-and-pull model was exemplified by Lundberg, in an advertisement directed towards potential tourists showing sunny beaches with sunbathers.
• The advertisement promotes a specific location and generates a push force that attempts to pry potential tourists out of their homes.
• Another way of understanding tourists is knowing how they decide on tourism product/services and destinations.
• Their decision-making process would provide tourism businesses insights to effective marketing and advertising, techniques to effectively reach their target markets.
• This emphasize four successive fields which he believed exert influences on the decision of tourists.
• Travel Stimuli
• Personal and social determinants
• External variables
• Characteristics and features of the service
• (refer to figure 7. page 24)
• These comprises external stimuli that can awaken an individuals desire or need to travel in the form of promotional stimulation, personal and trade recommendation
• Examples advertising and promotion, travel literature, suggestions, reports from other travelers, travel trade suggestions and recommendations.
• These determine customer goals in the form of travel desires and expectations and the objective and subjective risks thought to be connected with travel.
• Examples socio-economic status, personality features, social influences and aspirations, attitudes and values, motivations, desires, needs and expectations.
• These involve the prospective travelers confidence in the service provider, destination image, past experience and cost and time constraints.
• Examples confidence in travel trade intermediary, destination service, previous travel experience, assessment of objectives, subjective risks, constraints in time, cost, etc.
• These also have a bearing on the decision and its outcome.
• Examples cost/value relations, attractions/amenities offered, range of travel opportunities, quality/quantity of travel information, type of arrangement offered.
• Tourist profile
• Age, education, income, attitude, previous experience and motivations.
• Travel awareness
• Image of destinations facilities and services which is based upon the credibility of the source.
• Destination resources and characteristics
• Attractions and features of the destination
• Trip features
• Distance, trip duration, and perceived risk of the area visited
• Hansal and Eislt (2004) provided a simple explanation of the decision-making process of tourists. This process is divided into two phases which are described as
• Planning phase where travelers decide on the basic parameters concerning their trip. Decisions in this phase are made at home, usually over a significant amount of time prior to the trip. Sometimes initial decisions are subjected to modification or completely revamped.
• Modification phase during which details are decided. This phase covers modifications made during the trip. Examples are choices of specific sites that were advertised in brochures that travelers obtained from tourist information centers or decision to stay at a hotel whose services are announced on a billboard.
• Models describing tourist decision-making process would make a long-list. They have basically the same purpose and that is to guide the tourism industry in understanding how tourists get motivated in traveling, what things influence or discourage them to travel, and where they information, and purchase their selected product.
• In short, these models have two fundamental roles to identify factors that influence the decision-making of the tourists and to enumerate the stages of their decision-making
• Refer to classifications of tourists based on their behavior.
• Over the years, the number of tourist typologies has grown. It is an indicator of how marketers have relied on understanding their consumers through their behavior.
• These typologies serve as guide to tourism business owners as to what products, services and facilities should be sold to certain tourists having the same behavior.
• Marketers and planners as well as managers of tourism businesses consider these typologies to guide their marketing, planning, and development and management functions.
• Several tourist typology models were developed by tourism experts and scholars. Some of the more popular models include the following
• Plogs Psychocentric-Allocentric Model
• Cohens Tourist Typology
• Global Travel Survey
• Pearces Travelers Category
• Stanley Plog classifed tourists along a continuum with allocentrics on one end and psychocentrics on the other end.
• Generally, allocentrics seeks adventure while psychocentrics seek the comfort of familiar surroundings in their tourism experiences.
• Eric Cohen categorized tourist into four organized mass tourist, individual mass tourist, the explorer and the drifter. This is similar to Plogs model wherein psychocentrics are further divided into organized and individualized and the allocentrics into explorers and drifters.
• This survey done in the United Kingdom in 2005 has a more general approach to classifying tourists into adventurers, worriers, dreamers, economizers and indulgers.
• These are based on how tourists perceived traveling.
• Are motivated to seek new experiences
• Value diversity
• Seek new activities, cultures and people
• Are independent and in control
• Travel plays a central role in their lives
• Dont need to be pampered
• I feel confident that I could find my way around a city that I have never visited before. I really hate traveling with a group of people, even if theyre people I know.
• Suffer considerable anxiety about traveling
• Travel is relatively unimportant to them
• Are not particularly adventurous
• Most traveling is too stressful for me. I worry a lot about home when Im away. I have a fear of flying.
• Are fascinated by travel
• Their own travel tends to be more mundane than might be expected give their travel ideas.
• Their trips are oriented more toward relaxation than adventure.
• Lack confidence in their ability to master the details of traveling
• Anxious about the stresses of travel.
• I like I have to travel to enjoy life fully. I like to be able to impress people by telling them about the interesting places Ive visited. I really rely on maps and guidebooks when I travel to a new place.
• They travel primarily because they need a break, travel is not a central activity for them.
• Seek value in travel
• Their experience of travel does not add meaning to their lives
• Their sense of adventure is low
• Traveling first-class is a waste of money, even if you can afford it.
• Like to be pampered
• Their travel is not a central or important experience
• Are generally willing to pay for a higher level of service when they travel
• Do not find travel intimidating or stressful
• I dont worry about how much things cost when I travel. Its worth paying extra to get the special attention I want when I travel.
• Pearce developed 15 traveler categories based on major role-related behaviors.
• Tourist - Explorer
• Traveler - Missionary
• Holidaymaker - Overseas student
• Jetsetter - Anthropologist
• Businessperson -Hippie
• Migrant - International athlete
• Conversationist - Overseas journalist
• - Religious pilgrim
• Takes photos, buys souvenirs, goes to famous places, stays briefly in one place, does not understand the local people.
• Stays briefly in one place, experiments with local food, goes to famous places, takes photos, explores privately.
• Takes photos, goes to famous places, is alienated from society, buys souvenirs, contributes to the visited economy.
• Lives a life of luxury, is concerned with social status, seeks sensual pleasures, prefers interacting with people of his/her own kind.
• Concerned with social status, contributes to the economy, does not take photos, prefers interacting with people of his/her own kind, goes to famous places.
• Has language problems, prefers interacting with people of his/her own kind, does not understand the local people, does not live a life of luxury, does not exploit people.
• Interested in the environment, does not buy souvenirs, does not exploit the local people, explores places privately, takes photos.
• Explores places privately, is interested in the environment, takes physical risks, does not buy souvenirs, keenly observes the visited society.
• Does not buy souvenirs, searches for the meaning of life, does not live a life of luxury, does not seek sensual pleasures, keenly observes the visited society.
• Experiments with local food, does not exploit the local people, takes photos, keenly observes the visited society, takes physical risks.
• Keenly observes the visited society, explores places privately, is interested in the environment, does not buy souvenirs, takes photos.
• Does not buy souvenirs, does not live a life of luxury, is not concerned with social status, does not take photos, does not contribute to the economy.
• Not alienated from own society, does not exploit the local people, does not understand the local people, explores places privately, searches for the meaning of life.
• Takes photos, keenly observes the visited society, goes to famous places, takes physical risks, explores places privately
• Searches for the meaning of life, does not live a life of luxury, is not concerned with social status, does not exploit the local people, does not buy souvenirs.
• Market segmentation is similar to tourist typology.
• It is another way of classifying tourists and understanding them.
• Segmentation is a sort of grouping people with the same characteristics such as geographic, demographic, psychographic, and product-related characteristics.

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Social Life

Tourists, travelers and trip advisors, the social psychology of travel and tourism..

Posted July 26, 2023 | Reviewed by Tyler Woods

• Travel is almost always a social activity, whether we like or not.
• Tourists and travelers are rather different from each other.
• We often give travel advice because it helps us, as well as to help others.

There are invariably other people around when we travel, including family, friends, bystanders, and the residents of the places we visit. Decisions we make about where, when, and how to travel are typically made with others in mind, even if we are not deliberately travelling with them. Have you ever selected a destination precisely to avoid (or seek) the crowd?

Travel, in other words, is social in nature.

Even at the planning stage, decisions about where to go and with whom are seldom solely about our individual choice. Social psychologists stress that our intentions are compromised by other people. We are easily swayed by prevailing routines and social norms.

Imagine you are trying to decide whether to visit Ibiza, Alaska, or Chihuahua. Your plans will probably be affected by social mediators, such as the potential for social encounters ( Who else will be there?) , our perceived social group identity ( Will I fit in with the kinds of people who will be there?), or an urge to conform or be different ( Are other people going or will I be the only one?) . Where and how we travel depends on how much we identify with or feel comfortable in certain social situations. A perceived lack of social competence in a social situation (cruise, hen party, pilgrimage, chess convention), may interfere with our plans. A decision, for example, about whether to go to a jazz festival or a silent retreat may well be affected by feelings of belongingness to a group. This said, the good news is that such group allegiances are far from fixed. For example, after your third world cruise, you might start to feel you belong a little more.

What is the difference between a traveller and a tourist?

Many of us people-watch at train stations and airports, leading us to categorise our fellow passengers. We may ask ourselves, which of these people are travellers and which are tourists? It is often said that tourist is a label we reserve for others, and traveller is what we like to call ourselves. In his novel about clashing cultures of North America and North Africa, The Sheltering Sky, Paul Bowles distinguished tourists, who enjoy visiting diverse locations for short periods, from travellers, who like to roam and are as comfortable in long-term transit as they are at home. Tourists often do their travelling under the protection of travel companies who do most of the organising and booking for them. Meanwhile, travellers roam relatively unprotected and are likely to have direct contact with culturally diverse people as they wander away from the beaten track.

A continuum of traveller types, from explorers to conservatives

Do you interact with host communities (a.k.a. "locals") when you travel, or would you rather keep your distance? A continuum has been proposed, to distinguish between so-called dependents, conservatives, explorers, and belonging-seekers , based on how much we like to interact with local communities whilst on our travels.

• Dependents typically travel in established groups (friends, relatives, parties) as part of a package tour, on short-term visits, and generally avoid extended or informal interactions with hosts.
• Conservatives have more host contact, though mainly to gain information or guidance. Communications with hosts typically involve speaking with local tourist representatives, hotel staff, tour guides, or taxi drivers.
• Explorers are more open to social contact with hosts and are eager to find out about them through casual conversation, often in the local language. Explorers determinedly stray into non-tourist sites and seek out locations that are off the tourist trail.
• Belonging-seekers, the most intrepid of all, self-identify as travellers, not tourists. They engage with locals, sharing experiences, participating in quotidian life. If invited, they visit hosts’ homes, share authentic cultural experiences, and report positive attitudes to a place and its residents. They often seek employment and learn the language.

This continuum is handy and informative, and can also be fluid. A visitor may begin as a conservative, yet the passage of time and cultivation of interest may see them flourish into belonging-seekers.

Why Trip-Advise?

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg once said that nothing influences travellers more than a recommendation from a trusted friend. These trusted friends typically belong to online influencer communities. We don’t generally know them personally. Online word of mouth has overtaken old-school alternatives (asking neighbours and friends) as the go-to source for travel guidance. Over three-quarters of travellers consult online customer reviews when booking hotels. User-generated reviews are the dominant travel marketing promotional tool.

Why do some of us feel the need to offer travel tips to strangers? One motivation may be a resulting glowing feeling of belongingness to an imagined community of travellers. Writing travel advice can make us helpful or accepted by travel peers we will never encounter. Sharing travel tips can also be motivated by altruism (a social urge to be helpful) or by a desire for increased self-esteem .

Other rewards for online trip advising include enjoyment, a desire to exert power over large companies, and, of course, letting off steam or wanting to become an influencer. Trip advisors can be labelled as altruists (predisposed to help), careerists (keen to become influencers), hipsters (seeking connectedness), boomerangs (comment and like seekers), and connectors (keen to share).

Yet not all travellers write reviews. A large, silent majority of lurkers read reviews but don’t post, perhaps over concerns of security. Whatever the reason, it is worth remembering when planning your next adventure that most online trip advice is produced by a vocal minority.

We usually travel together, whether we like it or not.

Social psychology helps us understand various aspects of travel behaviour, such as purchasing patterns, travel typologies and trip advising. Above all, this branch of psychology reminds us that every phase of the travel adventure, from planning through experiencing and reviewing, takes place amongst bystanders, advisers, followers, and companions, all of whom combine to ensure that solitary travel is virtually impossible.

Bowles, P. (1949) The Sheltering Sky, London: Penguin

Fan (2017) Tourist Typology in Social Contact: An Addition to Existing Theories. Tourism Management  60:357-36

Ma, W. W. K., & Chan, A. (2014). Knowledge sharing and social media: Altruism, perceived online attachment motivation, and perceived online relationship commitment. Computers in Human Behavior, 39 , 51–58.

Munar, A. M., & Jacobsen, J. K. S. (2014). Motivations for sharing tourism experiences through social media. Tourism Management, 43 , 46–54

Stevenson, A. (2023), The Psychology of Travel London: Routledge

Yoon, Y., Kim, A. Kim, J., Choi, J. (2019) The effects of eWOM characteristics on consumer ratings: evidence from TripAdvisor.com, International Journal of Advertising , 38:5, 684-703,

Yoo, K. H., & Gretzel, U. (2008). What motivates consumers to write online travel reviews? Information Technology & Tourism, 10 (4), 283–295.

Andrew Stevenson, Ph.D., is a senior lecturer in psychology at Manchester Metropolitan University, England and the author of The Psychology of Travel .

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Introduction.

What are the origins of our impulses to travel? Many scientists believe that the answer lies in the brain, and the way it is programmed. There are two dimensions to the way the mind influences our propensity to travel. First, we can explore through insights from neuroscience how physiological characteristics of the brain influence movement, and second, we can investigate how human psychology relates to travel.

I feel the need… the need for speed..   Maverick, Top Gun (1986), dir.Tony Scott

Key Aspects

Neuroscience, humans have unique neural mechanisms for movement.

Human babies are believed to follow the same chains of motor command as other animals, until they learn to walk, at which point we develop neural mechanisms that are unique in allowing us to co-ordinate complex movements. Professor Francesco Lacquaniti of the University of Rome believes that the co-ordination and maintenance of upright balance during human walking is more difficult than achieving balance during quadrupedal locomotion, and requires specific and complex neural pulses.

Our brains are wired to adapt to new forms of movement

Over the course of human social evolution, we have adapted rapidly to new forms of movement. As Stephen Gislason has explained ‘Ten thousand years ago… you learned to throw a spear, catch a fish or carry a deer carcass on your back. Today, you learn to throw a football, move a pen across a paper surface, push keys on a keyboard and control movement with a mouse or joystick.’

Our brains have a circadian rhythm and are wired for sunlight

Long distance travel can be disorientating, particularly if we cross multiple time zones in a short timeframe. We are wired to wake and work under sunlight: travel outdoors can therefore release endorphins and improve our feeling of well-being.

Our brains need travel for health

Movement benefits our mental health over the short and long term. But even inactive travel has benefits for the mind. According to Professor M C Diamond, novelty and challenge – such as we encounter when travelling – are two of five key elements needed for healthy brain ageing.

Travel, curiosity and creativity

Some scientists have described humans as ‘infovores’, noting that our curiosity, our need for new information, is related to release of chemicals in the brain that make us feel good. Other scientists have shown that our imagination and creativity can be increased by travel and even by the idea of travel or ‘psychological distance’ (Jia et al, 2009). It has been found that that spatial navigation, imagination and future thinking are all underpinned by a common set of ‘scene construction’ processes within the hippocampus. Perhaps the benefits of travel asserted by many cultures past and present – travel as an experience that broadens the mind – may have some neurological basis, lying within the ‘scene construction’ process of the hippocampus.

• Many journeys are not motivated by need but by desire. Sometimes we travel further than we need and we do not always seek to minimize economic costs.
• Cognitive psychology indicates that travel decision-making is complex, based on personality, perception and information processing.
• The aging process has significant effects on our propensity and psychological attitude towards travel. Older people tend to be less adventurous in their travel choices, preferring to use modes and visit destinations that are familiar.
• The emotions have a strong role to play in our travel choices. The sometimes competing feelings of pleasure, nostalgia, fear and freedom all affect our individual ideals of travel and the limits that we place on our movement. Perceptions of danger and safety, for example, can strongly affect the destinations we choose. One of the most common themes for anxiety dreams is the imagining of journeys gone wrong.

The use of traveling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are. Samuel Johnson, ‘Letter to Hester Thrale’ (1773)

Practical Implications

• Movement is hard wired into the human brain. Scientists argue that increasingly we should appreciate the benefits of movement as a human need.
• Humans can become psychologically distressed if their movement is restricted; hence confinement is commonly seen as form of a punishment. For mobility-disabled people the need for travel is often particularly important. Until recently most public transport was inaccessible to disabled people, resulting in their isolation and arrest of their full potential.
• The psychological motivations for travel are complex and differ between individuals, reflecting such factors as age, gender, emotions and experience.

Our style of locomotion, together with our cognitive abilities, probably was instrumental for evolving our style of social life. As for the other way around, that is, whether socialization plays a major role in the development of locomotion in human children, I really don’t know what to answer… the issue is wide open. Professor Francesco Lacquaniti, Atlantic Magazine (2011)

Further Reading/Resources

Hannaford, Carla  Smart Moves: Why Learning is not All in Your Head. (2000) Explains how movement can help cognitive development and learning

Harrison, Clearwater, and McKay (eds) From Antarctica to Outer Space: Life in Isolation and Confinement. ( 1991) Investigation into the way isolation and lack of movement affect the mind

Tony Hiss, In Motion: The Experience of Travel (2010) Enjoyable investigation of the psychology of motion and ‘deep travel’

Michael Brien – The Travel Psychologist: http://www.michaelbrein.com/index2.htm Readable popular introduction to the psychology of travel

Key Questions

How adaptable are we to new forms of movement? What role do the emotions play in our travel choices and behavior, and how can our transport systems incorporate these insights?

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The Tourist Psychology and the Creation of Tourist Experiences

• Living reference work entry
• First Online: 20 October 2023
• Cite this living reference work entry

• Gagandeep Soni 2 ,
• Sarah Hussain 3 &
• Firdous Ahmad Shah 3  

Part of the book series: Springer International Handbooks of Education ((SIHE))

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Psychology in tourism has its own key implications. Tourism studies must incorporate tourists as they are the dynamic participants. This chapter defines the significance of psychological know-how associated with tourism practice. Experiences generated are inclined toward expectation fulfillment and past events and are construed in the memory of the tourists resulting in the formation of new expectancies. Since the tourist experience is subjective in nature, and every experience created is unique, intrinsic, and personal to a tourist, it is important to understand the implementation of the concept of general psychology associated with tourists. The concept of tourist psychology in association with the notion of tourist experience is a topic of significance as it provides a foundation for the future tourist behavior. Destination selection, travel motivations, and utilization of services along with the satisfaction and memories created are important aspects of general psychology related to tourism practices. Understanding the antecedents and consequences in context to the tourist experience is equally substantial in tourism research. The tourist experience is complex and is an interface with the destination of visit wherein the destinations compose the actual experience site and the tourists are the actors of that experience. The notion of “tourist experience” is an intricate and a multifaceted psychological process which should be understood and studied by the destination marketers in association with the tourist motivations and their desire to travel.

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Soni, G., Hussain, S., Shah, F.A. (2024). The Tourist Psychology and the Creation of Tourist Experiences. In: Sharma, A. (eds) International Handbook of Skill, Education, Learning, and Research Development in Tourism and Hospitality. Springer International Handbooks of Education. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-3895-7_6-1

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