ABSTRACT
Tourist typology and its characteristics are popular topics in tourism studies. Tourism scholars have focused on identifying tourist typologies to understand what tourists want when they travel. This paper aims to understand the typologies and characteristics of travelers who have a background as tourism educators and are considered experts in the field of tourism. As a group who believes in having expertise in the field of tourism, the travel patterns and decision making of this traveler group when traveling are undoubtedly different from tourists in general. The sample in this study was 22 tourism academics from Indonesia who participated in a three-weeks tourism short-course in Hong Kong. Data obtained through in-depth interviews with all short-course participants and content analyzed. Studies show that there are three academic-traveler typologies with each specific characteristic, namely, story-seeker, awe-explorer, and cognitively saturated traveler. This research has implications on how destination management organizations manage a destination and create an experience for their target market.
