Examining the meaning of luxury in tourism: a mixed-method approach

ABSTRACT

This paper adopts a mixed method approach to examine antecedents and consequents of luxury tourism. Specifically, a structural model was proposed to depict what motivates tourists to make a luxury-driven tourism trip and what they expect from it. The antecedents and consequences of attitudes was then depicted through content analysis of 431 narratives. The study demonstrates that luxury has more a socially driven meaning than a self-constructed meaning, though narratives are more fluid on personal achievements. Regardless of the ambivalent nature of this concept, the defined traits of luxury tourism contribute to establishing a common set of practices to develop and make luxury intelligible.

KEYWORDS:

• Luxury consumption
• cultural values
• conspicuous consumption
• social status
• mixed methods

Acknowledgement

The authors would like to thank the grant support of Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (Grant UID/ECO/04007/2013) and FEDER/COMPETE (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007659).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.