ABSTRACT
A plethora of studies exists that attempt to define a tourist and distinguish tourists from travellers. Heterogeneity of the market is commonly accepted and several scholars engaged in segmenting this heterogenous market into internally homogenous and externally heterogenous groups. Despite the prolonged discussion and the endeavours to understand tourists more holistically, there is neither a unifying and empirically grounded definition of the term tourist, nor a commonly accepted method to classify tourists into different meaningful segments. In fact, more recently scholars argue that the multidimensionality and hybridity of tourists restrain the classification of homogenous groups. Today’s tourists are constantly accumulating experiences and they are considered more experienced compared with the past. The level of past experience was also used in previous studies to predict travel motivation and behaviour and to distinguish experienced from less experienced tourists. Most studies applied pre-defined measures such as the number of past trips or age. These measures are criticized for simplifying a complex construct, particularly given the subjective and dynamic nature of experiencing. Given the centrality of tourist typologies in product development and marketing, more innovative approaches that acknowledge the complexity and multidimensionality of today’s tourists are called for. One such attempt is presented in this chapter. The chapter explores the dimensions of an experienced tourist and proposes an empirically grounded typology of an experienced tourist based on an exploratory mixed-methods approach. The synthesized findings are compared with existing tourist typologies and the understanding of today’s tourists and tourist typologies are advanced.
