Passengers’ behavioural intentions towards cruise port of call: evidence from senior tourists

ABSTRACT

Previous literature has focused on identifying the behavioural intentions of the cruise passengers in the ports of call. Nevertheless, there is no prior experience in the senior passenger segment. The present study tries to verify hypotheses about the effects of the cruise passenger’s age regarding the intention to revisit and the intention of recommending the port of call. This study used a sample of 451 tourists who visited Malaga (Spain) on cruise stops during 2018–2019. The investigation applied both PLS-SEM algorithm and regression techniques. The results show that the senior segment has singular intentions to revisit and recommend the port of call and that these intentions have different antecedents compared to other segments.

KEYWORDS:

• Senior tourism
• cruise tourism
• behavioural intentions
• port of call
• word of mouth recommendation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lidia López-Marfil

Lidia López-Marfil, Ph.D., Tourism Program of the University of Málaga, Spain. She is currently a Associate Professor with the Department of Economics and Business Administration of the Univesity of Málaga. Her research interests include tourism behaviour, cruise tourism, senior tourism, and sustainable tourism.

Manuel A. Fernández-Gámez

Manuel A. Fernández-Gámez, Ph.D., is currently a Associate Professor with the Department of Finance and Accounting, Director of the Sustainable Economy and Finance Chair, and Director of the Financial Management Master of the University of Málaga, Spain. Also, he is researcher at the Research Centre for Tourism, Sustainability and Well-Being, Portugal. He has published more than 40 articles in refereed journals in the fields of bankruptcy prediction, corporate reputation, tourism management, and emotional intelligence. His research interests include cruise tourism, corporate reputation, financial performance, economic growth, and artificial intelligence.

Juan A. Campos-Soria

Juan A. Campos-Soria, Ph.D., is Associate Professor in Economics and Economics of Tourism at the University of Málaga, Spain. Also, he is researcher at the Research Centre for Tourism, Sustainability and Well-Being (Portugal). He has participated in international research projects for The Department for Culture, Media, and Sport (UK) and The World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC), as well as numerous national projects for public and private institutions. He has worked on many aspects of economic analysis of tourism, gender economics, sustainable tourism, and the labour market, publishing several papers in leading international journals, such as the Annals of Tourism Research, Tourism Management, Journal of Travel Research, Journal of Sustainable Tourism, International Journal of Hospitality Management, Tourism Economics, or Applied Economics, among others.

David Alaminos

David Alaminos, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of Department of Financial Management, Universidad Pontificia Comillas, Spain. His main research areas are Computational Economics and Financial Economics, focused on forecasting of financial distress and international financial crises. He has published in different top international journals, such as Economic Modelling, Computational Economics, PLoS ONE, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Singapore Economic Review, among others.