Who are the language tourists? : A factor-cluster analysis based on language-related attitudes, beliefs, and travel outcomes

• Researching language tourism (where language learning is a primary or secondary motivation for the trip) is a growing field of interest as the importance of language within tourism experiences is recognized. Conceptually located at the intersection of cultural, youth, academic, and educational tourism, past research has focused on the analysis of tourists who travel to formally learn a language, missing out on an important number of tourists who travel to learn a language informally. To overcome this gap in research, cluster analysis of a sample of 1014 formal and informal language tourists was undertaken to segment them based on language-related attitudes, beliefs, and travel outcomes. Four clusters of language tourists were identified, called the Enthusiasts, the Devoted, the Pragmatists, and the Less-Committed. We propose that two axes are fundamental for characterizing and understanding language tourists, thus contributing to expand theory on language tourism.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Social och ekonomisk geografi -- Kulturgeografi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Social and Economic Geography -- Human Geography (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

cluster analysis

educational tourism

language tourism

segmentation

travel behavior

Publikations- och innehållstyp

ref (ämneskategori)

art (ämneskategori)