ABSTRACT
SUMMARY. This paper explores the effectiveness of geographic origin as a basis for segmenting visitors to small island nations that depend exclusively on international travelers as tourism markets. International visitation data drawn from the Barbados annual tourist survey, data on five geographic markets (USA, the UK, Canada, Germany, and Trinidad) are examined to determine whether country origin can be used as a segmentation criterion to effectively establish preferred visitor profiles. Visitor characteristics and profiles are found to be distinguishable by country of origin. These have implications for tourism promotion and distribution strategies for small island nations. [Article copies available/or alee/rom The Haworth Document Delivery Service: 1-800-342-9678. E-mail address: getin/o@ haworth. com}
INTRODUCTION
Understanding visitor behavior and its relevance to increasing tourism's economic benefits is critically important to all travel destinations. Such knowledge can assist decision makers to better identify visitor markets that offer opportunities for growth and formulate appropriate strategies to maximize tourism yields. Country of origin, since it typically serves as a basis for categorizing tourist markets and is universally employed as a basis for collecting and interpreting tourism data, has the potential for providing this information if it can identify preferred visitor markets.
