ABSTRACT
The cultural tourism market is incredibly diverse. While many people would like to believe that cultural tourists represent the stereotypical deep learning tourist, in reality the range of cultural tourism varies from those who are looking for an intense experience to people visiting cultural attractions for no deeper reason than simply to pass time. This chapter explores the evolving knowledge of the cultural tourism market. Importantly, the chapter presents a segmentation model of cultural tourists developed by the authors that has been adopted by many national and international tourism organizations. The segmentation model incorporates both concepts of centrality of motive and depth of experience to identify five segments of cultural tourist: the purposeful cultural tourists; the sightseeing cultural tourists; the casual cultural tourist; the incidental cultural tourists; and the serendipitous cultural tourist. It then proceeds to explore the application of the segmentation model in practice by discussing how different segments respond to different marketing and promotional messages. The chapter concludes with a cautionary note about the need to be somewhat skeptical about studies that indicate vast numbers of deep cultural tourists exist and how cultural tourists differ from mainstream tourists. It proceeds to explain the methodological flaws involved in producing such fantastical figures.
