Familiar tourists, their behaviours and place attachments: an empirical framework

ABSTRACT

Recognising the importance of familiar places in the lives of individuals and its prevalence in society, this paper examines the behaviours of familiar tourists and their relationships with their familiar places. Stimulated by conceptual work by Pearce on the experience of visiting home and familiar places, published in Annals of Tourism Research in 2012 alongside personal observation of the phenomenon, and with input from early focus group work, the fieldwork was conducted in two rural and peripheral destinations of Wales in the United Kingdom across peak and shoulder periods. This paper contributes a multi-level framework of familiar tourist behaviour rooted in the evidence. In unifying the study findings, the framework of familiar tourist behaviour emphasises the consumption behaviours of familiar tourists including the longevity and dynamic nature of the relationship between familiar tourist and their familiar place, the role of familiar tourist resources, skills and competencies, and the overarching theme of belonging.

KEYWORDS:

• Familiar tourists
• repeat tourists
• familiar places
• place attachment
• tourist framework

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Jackie Clarke is Reader in Marketing and Consumer Behaviour at the Oxford Brookes Business School, Oxford Brookes University. She is also a geographer by training and Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society with an early industry career in tour operation and aviation. Her research focuses on tourist behaviour and visitor experiences both at micro and destination level, with recent work examining the applicability of value co-creation in tourism and the arts, the visitor experience in the museum sector, and repeat visitation behaviours to meaningful destinations or familiar places.

David Bowen is Reader in Tourism Management at the Oxford Brookes Business School, Oxford Brookes University. Also a geographer, his main research interests revolve around tourist behaviour, especially tourist satisfaction, and tourism destination management. Current funded research projects include the familiar tourists-familiar places study and a project examining enclave resorts against non-enclave resorts in relation to economic dependency and sustainable tourism development.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by British Academy/Leverhulme Trust [grant number SG130271].