Abstract
Festivals have been increasingly utilized as cultural tourism attractions and an effective image maker for destinations. In the intensively competitive international tourism market, promotion of events requires in-depth cross-cultural research so that proper marketing strategies can be made based on an improved understanding of tourists from the target market. This study is aimed at identifying motives and perceptions of Chinese visitors to the Munich Oktoberfest from a cross-cultural viewpoint. Potentials of using this German hallmark event to effectively enhance the destination's competitive advantages in China's outbound tourism market and marketing implications are discussed as well in the study.
近年来很多旅游目的地利用节日活动作为文化旅游产品, 以有效地塑造与加强旅游目的地形象。随着国际旅游市场的竞争日益激烈化,节日旅游的推广更需要深入的跨文化调查研究,从而能够在充分了解目的地市场游客的基础上制定有效营销战略。本文从跨文化角度分析了中国出境游客参加德国慕尼黑啤酒节的动机与感知,同时讨论了在中国出境旅游市场上,利用这一重要 德国节日旅游产品提升旅游目的地竞争优势的潜力及其市场推广的营销启示。
Acknowledgments
This research was conducted with funding from the Institute of Geography, University of Goettingen, Germany. The authors thank Prof. Dr. Karl-Heinz Pörtge for his kind support and Komsan Suriya and Thomas Wieland for their suggestions. Thanks also go to Shaopeng Cui, Can Luo, Jingqiu Wang, and Xiaofeng Zhou, who assisted the on-site data collection during the event survey.
Notes
1. Tourists from Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, or ethnic Chinese tourists from other nations were not included in this survey.
2. The target respondents in the original survey also included a category of Chinese festivalgoers who have stayed in Germany for more than 3 months. This part of the sample data is not discussed in this article.
3. U.S. dollars to Chinese Renminbi RMB: 1 US$ = 6.6406 RMB on October 12, 2010.