Does the travel career pattern model work for repeat tourists?

ABSTRACT

Tourism researchers and practitioners have an interest in understanding tourists’ travel patterns, and one of the most used models applied to reach this goal is the seminal Travel Career Pattern (TCP) model. However, repeat tourism is underexplored and in the present research, the authors provide an initial investigation of repeat tourists using the TCP model. Based on survey data from 500 international tourists in India the present research found that the TCP model is valuable for exploring repeat tourists’ travel patterns and motives. Within the TCP model results show that middle level motives were found to be most important for tourists with more diverse travel experience which include nature, self-development and self-actualisation. Significant relationships were also found among the origin of tourists, their travel experiences and their motivational pattern.

KEYWORDS:

• Travel career pattern
• repeat tourism
• tourists' Motivation
• India
• tourist behaviour

Introduction

Tourists’ choice of destination is a compromise between novelty and loyalty. On the one hand, travelling to a new destination is exciting and stimulating (Chen & Yoon, 2019), while on the other hand, visiting again creates a sense of joy of the familiar and deepen one’s knowledge and understanding of that place (Matzler et al., 2019; Pearce & Kang, 2009; Tjørve et al., 2018).

The literature has outlined a list of key psychological factors such as motives, expectations, satisfaction and personal experience that influence tourists when they decide on the destination for the next trip (Caldeira & Kastenholz, 2018). However, despite repeat tourism being a significant part of overall tourism flows, there has so far been no systematic study to investigate whether these psychological factors may differ between first time and repeat tourists. It is, for example, possible that tourists’ motivation for re-visiting a destination may be different from the motives amongst those making a first visit to that destination (Oppermann, 1997, 1999; Rittichainuwat et al., 2008).

The literature shows that first time and repeat tourists differ in several meaningful ways. For example, first time and repeat visitors are found to be heterogeneous in terms of their destination-related needs and behaviour, consumption behaviours, expenditure pattern, marketing cost and profitability (Alfarhan & Nusair, 2022; Croes et al., 2010; Rather et al., 2022; Wen et al., 2023). Understanding the travel patterns and motives of repeat tourists, and whether they differ from first time tourists’ motives, is crucial for both research and marketing actions (Lau & McKercher, 2004; Swart et al., 2018). This is the gap that the present research addresses, and the key aim is thus to investigate the travel motives patterns of those who visit repeatedly to one destination, and whether and how it may differ from first-time visitors motives. We investigate travel motives for repeat tourists with a systematic motives model, the Travel Career Pattern model (TCP model) (Pearce, 2019; Pereda, 2002). The TCP model is based upon Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and includes five different levels of travel motives.

We investigate repeat tourists’ TCP, and thereby contribute to and extend the literature on repeat tourism (Alegre & Cladera, 2006; Campo-Martínez et al., 2010; Oppermann, 1997). The present study also contributes to the TCP literature (Huang & Hsu, 2009; Paris & Teye, 2010; Pearce & Lee, 2005) by being the first TCP study that investigates repeat tourists as the object of analysis. Finally, the study is set in the context of India, thereby contributing to the scarce literature on India as a tourist-market in general, and specifically, contributing with research on the role of travel motivation in an Indian context, which has so far been largely unaddressed (Mody et al., 2014).

In the following section, we will review the extant literature on repeat tourism and the TCP model. Then the methodology will be outlined.

Literature review and research questions

Repeat tourism and destination loyalty have been identified as significant topics in tourism management and marketing (Campo-Martínez et al., 2010; Gitelson & Crompton, 1984). Repeat tourists not only bring higher revenue and generate employment, but also promote favoured destinations to others in their network via word-of-mouth publicity (Reid & Reid, 1994; Van Dyk et al., 2019; Wong & Zhao, 2016). Hence, repeat tourists constitute a highly desirable market. Further, repeat tourists are an important segment because they engage more deeply with the local culture and indulge in various activities that they could not appreciate during their first visit (Caldeira & Kastenholz, 2018; Lau & McKercher, 2004).

The phenomenon of repeat tourism received wide attention after a landmark study by Gitelson and Crompton (1984). Since then, numerous investigations have been conducted (Baloglu et al., 2004; Gyte & Phelps, 1989; Kozak, 2001). Some studies have examined repeat visitors in the context of re-visiting exactly the same sites of a destination (Gitelson & Crompton, 1984; Oppermann, 1997, 1999) while others consider repeat visits to the broader region (Kozak, 2001, 2002; Tan, 2017). Another classification problem is related to the frequency of repeat visits, initially based on the terms ‘infrequent’, ‘frequent’, and ‘very frequent’ (Gitelson & Crompton, 1984). Later Oppermann (1999) proposed classifying visit frequency in terms of destination loyalty with infrequent visits classified as ‘somewhat loyal’, frequent visits as ‘loyal’ and very frequent visits as ‘very loyal’. This discrepancy clearly shows that that there are many ways to measure and operationalise the concept of repeat tourism and quantification of repeat visit frequency is still unclear.

Tourists’ destination loyalty has also been defined as ‘actual repeated visit’ to a destination; ‘behavioural intentions’, i.e. intentions to revisit a destination; or ‘willingness to recommend’ that destination (Chen & Chen, 2010; Ha & Jang, 2010; Lee et al., 2007; Oppermann, 2000; Pearce & Kang, 2009; Petrick, 2004; Zhang et al., 2014). Actual repeat visitor behaviour has generally been included under behavioural loyalty, however, various researchers have combined the intention to revisit with actual visit behaviour (Osti et al., 2012) as also outlined in a review paper by Zhang et al. (2014).

The other major literature that the present research draws on is the TCP literature. The focus of this literature is to understand why people travel. What motivates people to travel and the personal, logistical and destination features that influence the choice of travel destination have always been a topic of interest for both tourism researchers and marketers (Rice & Khanin, 2019; Rittichainuwat et al., 2008). Repeat tourism is subject to many variables but the potential importance of evolving motivational patterns is the focus of the present work. Tourist motivation researchers often adopted social psychological perspectives and tried to determine some common motive patterns shaping travel (Crompton & McKay, 1997; Devesa et al., 2010). A milestone study in travel motivation research is the TCP approach that was initially established as the Travel Career Ladder (TCL) approach (Pearce, 1988; Pearce & Caltabiano, 1983). Initially, the TCL approach aimed at studying those dynamic motivational factors which keep varying over the time as the travellers achieve more travel experience. It was derived from Maslow et al.’s (1970) hierarchy of needs theory of motivation which includes five levels of needs. Ranking from lowest to highest these are: relaxation, safety, relationship, self-esteem and self-actualisation needs. The hierarchical approach was employed to explain that with advancing travel experience, travellers’ motives become more complex and thus move higher in the TCL. Later, this ranked approach was revised and termed the TCP approach to better present the motives in a new graphical representation (Pearce & Lee, 2005).

This refreshed approach recognised a core level of motives (such as seeking fun and relaxation and relationships) that are consistently important in driving travel behaviour. Next, there are some middle layer motives, such as interaction with the local community and personal development, and then there are further outer layer motives such as isolation, romance or nostalgia for revisiting a simpler time (Oktadiana & Agarwal, 2022). The full TCP model is presented in Figure 1 to assist with understanding the patterns previewed here and provide a platform for reviewing the results and discussion. Previous studies established that middle level motives were more important to experienced travellers than outer motives. However, for those with limited travel experience all motives were equally important (Li et al., 2015; Oktadiana et al., 2017; Pearce, 2011).

Figure 1. The layers and motives of the Travel Career Path model (Pearce, 2005).

The TCP has been widely adopted and is considered one of the most prominent models within which to understand tourist motives (Oktadiana & Agarwal, 2022). Wu et al. (2019) examined the concept of travel life cycle by linking TCP theory. Their study involved 21,972 tourists visiting Macao over a four-year period. Oktadiana et al. (2017) revealed the differences in the travel motives between the Muslim tourists and the Western tourists, particularly in the core motives. Song & Bae's (2018) study was another one that used TCP to analyse travel motives of international students in Korea. Their study explored long travel careers and short travel career of international students as well as specified three categories of travel experiences; within home country, within Korea, and within other countries. Paris and Teye (2010) applied TCP framework in their study on backpacker travel motives – low and high travel experiences. Studies on travel motivess of the Australian university students going to Spain for study-abroad and the backpackers by Filep and Greenacre (2007) specified three key indicators of travel experience and the use of TCP qualitatively. The indicators comprised travelling frequencies, the number of destinations been visited, and the time spent on travelling. Higher and lower travel experience groups were examined.

While the TCP model has been applied in various contexts (e.g. Muslim tourists, international students, backpackers, spa tourism) no study so far has investigated the travel patterns of repeat tourists using the TCP model. The concept of repeat tourist behaviour has been fragmented with other indictors of destination loyalty such as intention to revisit a destination or making a positive recommendation for a destination (Zhang et al., 2014). The understanding of repeat tourist behaviour from an actual repeat tourist group can be substantially different from those who only intend to revisit a destination or make a positive recommendation (McKercher & Tse, 2012; Van Dyk et al., 2019). Therefore, our aim was to extend the TCP model to the particular context of repeat tourists, thereby contributing both to the TCP literature, and also to the literature on repeat tourists and their motivation. We did so with the understanding that repeat tourists are not a homogeneous group and their motivation to revisit a destination may change with each repeat visit. This study adds another layer in repeat tourist behaviour research by adopting a cross-sectional design and systematically studying the motivation pattern of visitors with different number of visits to a destination and systematically examining the differences in repeat tourist behaviour depending on whether two, three, four or more repeat visits were made. Hence, this study tests and extends the TCP approach to include repeat tourism.

The present study includes demographic factors and recognises the importance of accessible market segmentation variables in tourism research cited in the literature (Bowen, 1998; Vinerean, 2014). Researchers have attempted to explore similarities or differences between multiple groups in relation to travel patterns, travel behaviour and attitudes towards travel destinations (Oktadiana & Agarwal, 2022; Wen et al., 2023). Research has shown that destination image, motivation, perception, satisfaction levels and tourist activities may vary according to demographic characteristics of tourists, such as their country of origin, age and experience (Beerli & Martín, 2004; Kozak, 2002 Rice & Khanin, 2019). In his study on German and British visitors visiting Mallorca and Turkey, Kozak (2002) found differences in the visitors’ pull and push motivation. As an accompanying aim of the present study, age, origin and experience differences will be examined to help understand repeat tourists and their travel motives. This is further supported by a body of research on repeat behaviour (Alegre & Garau, 2010; Beerli & Martín, 2004) that highlights the importance of such socio-demographic factors.

Based on the reviewed literatures of repeat tourism and the TCP model, the first research question that we aim to address is what are the main travel motives of repeat tourists visiting the foreign destinations? In order for the investigation to be more specific we have restricted the sampling frame to those tourists without any family connection or heritage links. Business tourists are excluded from the sampling frame. The second research question is to what degree do the motivational pattern shift with the number of repeat visits. The third research question of the current study is to understand what is the role of selected sociodemographic variables in affecting the motivational shifts amongst repeat tourists. In general, the literature suggests that travel motives change as tourists attain more travel experience. Furthermore, the sociodemographic factors also influence the travel motives of the tourists. However, the connection between repeat tourist behaviour and travel career motives require empirical testing. We therefore propose the following exploratory hypotheses.

H1: There will be a shift in the travel motives for repeat tourists with different number of visits

H2: The travel motives of the repeat tourists will vary with their socio-demographic characteristics

In the following section, we outline the methodology used to investigate these two hypotheses.

Methodology

Destination context

Since ancient times, guests to India have been held in high esteem, regarded as ‘equivalent to god’ (Dixit, 2020). India has, however, only become popular as an international travel destination mainly in the past few decades. India is a country built on one of the world’s oldest civilisations with 40 world heritage sites (UNESCO World Heritage Convention, 2023). International tourists are attracted to India by its exotic natural and cultural diversity. Tourism marketing promote the destination as ‘Incredible India’ (Enoch & Grossman, 2010; Hottola, 2014; Patwardhan et al., 2020). Tourism assets include spectacular landscapes, stunning coastlines, rich wildlife, heritage, architecture, art, music, dance and colours. The county is famous for culture, food, spas, medical treatment, yoga and meditation, and venues for business and meetings (Bandyopadhyay & Nair, 2019; Hottola, 2014; Mody et al., 2014; Sharpley & Sundaram, 2005). With so much potential for tourism related activities, India naturally qualifies as a good context within which to investigate repeat tourism.

Tourism researchers have studied emerging trends, opportunities and challenges in the Indian tourism setting (Diekmann & Hannam, 2010). However, more systematic research is required to better understand the international tourist market in India (Patwardhan et al., 2020; Singh, 2016). Like other countries, India attracts many repeat tourists every year, however, limited data and research is available to support an in-depth understanding of trends and market changes (Singh et al., 2017). To the best of authors’ knowledge, there is no preceding study that has primarily addressed these motivational dynamics for repeat tourists to India. By exploring and analysing the reasons underlying repeat tourism to India a deeper understanding of international tourist behaviour may be developed to inform the work of promotional bodies. More specifically, the role of predicting factors such as ‘motives’ for repeat tourist behaviour have previously been identified as requiring further attention (Lau & McKercher, 2004) and in the absence of a rich repertoire of studies, the theme warrant special attention for a large destination like India.

Data collection

Ethics approval was obtained from the James Cook University's Human Research Ethics Committee before the start of the data collection (HREC Application Number H6928).

The study used a cross-sectional research design where repeat tourists with different number of previous visits were included in the sample such as those with one, two, three, four and more visits. A total of 500 respondents were recruited for the study. Data were collected between June 2017 and December 2018. Two key criteria in selecting the respondents were: first, the participant must have previously visited India at least one time or more, second, the respondents must not have any family, extended family or heritage link with India. A total of 500 respondents were recruited for the study. As the current study is based on the concept of ‘returning to India’, the entire geographical region of India was included when determining previous visits to India. The survey was conducted in seven cities which receive high volumes of international tourist every year. They are Agra, Chennai, Delhi, Goa, Jaipur, Mumbai, and Rishikesh. Data were collected during the peak tourist season between October and March when a high volume of international tourists arrive in India. Key tourist attraction sites were identified in each city for data collection. Every third tourist at various sites in these attraction locations was approached. The respondents were given the option to fill up the online or paper pencil survey. Respondents were screened by asking whether they had been to India before and if they had any family link with India. Only tourists with at least one previous visit, and without any family links to the country, were asked to complete the questionnaire. A 10% refusal rate was recorded from those identified as repeat tourists. Similar refusal rates have been reported in previous studies (Głąbiński, 2015). Various factors for refusal included privacy concerns or a busy schedule.

An information sheet with the informed consent form was also given to the participants before starting the survey to explain the purpose of the research as well as the acknowledgement of the participants’ assistances. The survey was anonymous and no identifiable information was collected.

The responses were screened and the views of eight respondents were discarded due to incomplete information. Additionally, a further structured sampling method was used which attempted to recruit relatively even numbers of men and women and tourists from across a multiple age range. Table 1 presents the profile of the participants with demographic characteristics such as gender, age, origin, educational level and number of previous visits to India.

Table 1. Profile of the respondents.

Socio-demographic profile		Frequency	Percentage
Gender	Male	265	54.3
	Female	223	45.7
	Total	488	100
Age	>18–20 years	25	5.1
	21–35 years	236	48.4
	36–55 years	174	35.7
	More than 55 years	53	10.9
	Total	488	100
Origin	Asian	100	21.6
	Western	362	78.4
	Total	462	100
Education	High School	64	13.3
	Diploma Qualification	64	13.3
	Bachelor Degree	153	31.9
	Postgraduate Degree	190	39.6
	Other (please specify)	9	1.9
	Total	480	100
Number of visits to India	2 Times	330	67.1
	3 Times	103	20.9
	4 Times	28	5.7
	More than 4 Times	31	6.3
	Total	492	100.0

Note: The total numbers vary due to missing responses.

Instruments

A three-part, self-administered survey was employed for the current study. The first part consisted of the necessary screening questions (1) Have you been to India before for holidays? (2) Do you have any existing family/heritage links with India? In part two of the survey, socio-demographic information from qualified participants was collected including gender, age, origin, education, past travel experience (both local and international). However, no personal identification information was collected.

The variables like age and origin were directly asked in the demographic section of the survey.

The indicator of age of 35 in this study is considered as a critical turning point of someone’s life; personally and professionally. This age is perceived as no longer a young age based on a study conducted by University of Kent (Johanson, 2017). Therefore, the participants who were below 35 years of age were classified as ‘younger’. Concerning the definition of the origin, it was based on the nationality. To establish the travel experience the participant were asked another question about their international travel experiences where the participants had to respond on a 4-point scale from inexperienced (1), somewhat experienced (2), experienced (3) to very experienced (4). Those who reported experienced or very experienced were included in the category of people with more travel experience. Part 3 included the TCP scale, which is discussed under the following section.

TCP scale

The original TCP scale is a 74-item self-administered questionnaire (Pearce & Lee, 2005) and has been used in various studies. For this study a recently developed concise version of the original scale was used (Oktadiana et al., 2017). It is adapted from the full version of the TCP scale. The 26 items of the concise TCP scale derive from 74 items with highest loading on 13 factors and can be categorised into three layers of motives which are core, middle and outer layers (see Figure 1). The 26 items used are original statements as used in the full scale. The factors are: novelty, escape/relax, nature, self-development through host site involvement, self-development (skill based), self-actualisation, security in relationship with others, strengthening family and friends’ relationship, isolation, autonomy, nostalgia, stimulation and social status. The instrument uses a Likert scale with five points ranging from 1 (not important at all) to 5 (extremely important).

A confirmatory analysis was conducted to estimate the underlying factor structure of the TCP Scale, which followed the same factor structure as determined by Oktadiana et al. (2017). The factor loadings on each item ranged from 0.43 to 0.82. The reliability measured by Cronbach alpha (0.89) indicated a good internal consistency. The underlying factors constituting core, middle and outer layer motives can be seen from Figure 1. Core layer motives include novelty, escape/relax and strengthening family and friends’ relationship. Middle layer motives include security in relationship with others, nature, self-development through host site involvement, self-development (skill based), self-actualisation. The outer layer motives include autonomy, isolation, nostalgia, stimulation, and social status (recognition).

Results

All the statistical analyses were conducted by the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS), version 25. The researchers used descriptive statistics to review the demographic variables.

The first hypothesis of the study (motivational shifts amongst the repeat tourists) serves as an extended enquiry originating from research question one (main specific motivational factors for international tourists). A one-way Multiple Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) was conducted with repeat visits as independent variable and three layers of motives (core, middle and outer) as the dependent variables. MANOVA was employed as it is able to assume the cause–effect relationship between two or more independent variables and two or more dependent variables. The results indicated a significant multivariate main effect for repeat visits, Wilk’s Lambda = .91, F (9, 1182.95) = 5.52, p < .001, partial eta squared .033. Power to detect the effect was .99 (See Table 2).

Table 2. Multivariate and Univariate F statistics as shown by two separate multivariate analysis of variance.

	Multivariate F statistics	Univariate F statistics
	Overall F (df)	Core motives F (df)	Middle motives F (df)	Outer motives F (df)
Number of visits	5.52** (9,1182.95)	1.51 (3, 488)	4.84* (3, 488)	5.58** (3, 488)
Age	.63 (3, 452)	1.89 (1,454)	.59 (1,454)	.62 (1,454)
Origin	3.90* (3, 452)	9.31**(1, 454)	7.65** (1, 454)	1.91 (1,454)
Past travel experience	7.63** (3, 452)	3.10 (1,454)	19.10** (1, 454)	.22 (1,454)

Note: Value in bold indicate significant results with p *.05, **.01.

Given the significance of the overall tests for repeat visits, univariate main effects were examined. As shown in Table 2, there was a significant difference for the middle layer motives among repeat tourists F (3, 488) = 4.84, p = .002, partial eta squared = .03, power = .91 and the outer layer motives F (3, 488) = 5.58, p = .001, partial eta squared = .033, power = .94. However, there were no significant differences among core layer motives for the repeat tourists’ motives F (3, 488) = 1.51, p < .05. Given that the Levene’s test of equality of variance was not significant (p > .05) Bonferroni post hoc comparisons were conducted. The post hoc comparisons were conducted for both middle layer motive and the outer layer motives. Significant middle layer motives pairwise differences were obtained in the group who had visited India two times (M = 3.57, SD = .03) in comparison to those who had visited three times (M = 3.76, SD = .06), p = .005, or more than 4 times (M = 3.61, SD = .12), p = .003 but there was no significant difference between other pairs. For outer layer motives, the pairwise comparison indicated that there were significant differences between those who travelled to India twice (M = 3.54, SD = .04), three times (M = 3.70, SD = .06), and four times (M = 3.74, SD = .12), when compared with those who had travelled more than 4 times (M = 3.20, SD = .12), p = .005, p < .001 and p = .002 respectively. There was also a significant difference between those who travelled to India twice (M = 3.54, SD = .04), when compared with those who travelled three times (M = 3.70, SD = .06), p = .032. Comparison between other pairs did not indicate any significant results (see Figure 2). Hence, the first hypothesis of the study was confirmed.

Figure 2. Differences in the Core, Middle and Outer motives among tourists with multiple number of visits.

Note: Age was excluded since no significant difference was found between young and older tourists.

The second hypothesis of the current study was to confirm the role of age, origin of the tourists and previous travel experience in changeing the motive patterns. However, before addressing this aim, a chi-square analysis was performed exploring the relationships among these three variables and the number of repeat visits made (as seen in Table 3). The cross tabulation was used to achieve two important outcomes: (1) it revealed the distribution of each variable according to selected frequencies of repeat visits and (2) it also tested the statistical significance of these relationship across these distributions. The chi-squares indicated a significant result for all age and previous experience variables indicating that the number of repeat visits was dependent on age and past experience (p < .05), however, the results were not significant for the variable of origin (p > .05). The follow up analyses for significant Chi-square results were conducted with standardised residual method following Beasley and Schumacker (1995). Holm’s sequential Bonferroni method was also employed to control type 1 error while making multiple comparison among the tourists with different numbers of repeat visits. There was a higher number of younger tourists (less than 35 years) in comparison to older tourists (more than 35 years) who had been to India for two times (chi-square = 7.96 p = .005). However, for tourists making repeat visits for more than 4 times, the number of older tourists was higher than number of younger tourists (chi-square = 10.19, p = .001).

Table 3. A cross-tabulation of number of repeat visits with other socio-demographic variables and results of Chi-square tests.

Socio-demographic variables	2 Times %	3 Times %	4 Times %	> 4 Times %	Chi-square value	p-value
Age
Young	72.0%	20.3%	4.2%	3.1%
Old	60.4%	22.0%	7.5%	10.1%	14.63	0.002
Gender
Male	70.6%	20.4%	5.3%	3.8%
Female	62.3%	22.0%	6.3%	9.4%	7.66	0.054
Origin
Asian	76.0%	17.0%	2.0%	5.0%
Western	62.2%	23.8%	6.9%	7.2%	7.69	0.053
Education
High school	84.4%	10.9%	1.6%	3.1%
Diploma qualification	67.2%	15.6%	6.3%	10.9%
Bachelor Degree	68.6%	20.9%	5.9%	4.6%
Postgraduate degree	58.9%	27.4%	6.8%	6.8%
Others	44.4%	22.2%	11.1%	22.2%	23.14	0.027
Past travel experience
Less experienced	81.8%	11.7%	4.5%	1.9%
More experienced	60.4%	25.1%	6.2%	8.3%	23.68	0.000

In particular, the relationship between number of repeat visits and past travel experience needed to be examined further as past experience could be a confounding variable with the TCP approach when investigating repeat visitation. The follow up tests with Holm’s sequential Bonferroni method was used to control type 1 error. The follow up tests indicated a significant difference in the past travel experience of the repeat tourists. There were a significantly higher number of more experienced tourists who had been to India two times (chi-square = 22.07, p < .001) or three times (chi-square = 11.58, p < .001), however, not for the tourists who had been four or more than four times (all p >  = .001).

To further explore the effect of age, origin and past travel experience on the shift within three layers of motives a three way MANOVA was conducted. The analysis of multivariate effects resulted in non-significant findings for one three way interaction (age x origin x past travel experience) and three two-way interaction effects (age x origin, age x past travel experience, origin x past travel experience). The multivariate effect for age was also non-significant, Wilk’s Lambda = .99, F (3, 452) = 0.64, p > .05. However, the significant multivariate effect for origin was obtained, Wilk’s Lambda = .98, F (3, 452) = 3.90, p = .009, partial eta squared .025, power = .83. The significant multivariate effect for past travel experience was also found, Wilk’s Lambda = .95, F (3, 452) = 7.63, p = .009, partial eta squared .048, power = .99.

Given the significance of the overall tests for origin and past travel experience, univariate main effects were examined. For the origin of the tourists there was a significant difference among the repeat tourists for core layer motives F (1, 454) = 9.31, p = .002, partial eta squared = .02, power = .861 indicating that core motives were more important for western tourists (M = 3.69, SD = .04) when compared to the Asian tourists (M = 3.45, SD = .07). Similarly, there was a significant difference among the repeat tourists for middle layer motives F (1, 454) = 7.65, p = .006, partial eta squared = .017, power = .788 indicating that middle layer motives were also more important for western tourists (M = 3.64, SD = .04) when compared to the Asian tourists (M = 3.44, SD = .06). However, no significant difference was found among Asian and Western tourist on the outer layer motives p > .05. In this way, the second hypothesis of the study was confirmed.

The analysis of the past travel experiences of tourists indicated a significant difference among the repeat tourists for middle layer motives F (1, 454) = 19.10, p < .001, partial eta squared = .04, power = .99 indicating that middle layer motives were more important for more experienced tourists (M = 3.69, SD = .04) when compared to the less experienced tourists (M = 3.38, SD = .05). However, no significant difference was found among less experienced and more experienced tourists on the outer layer motives p > .05. This is worth noting here that for core motives a partial significant outcome was obtained indicating core motives to be more important for more experienced tourists (M = 3.64, SD = .05) when compared to the less experienced tourists (M = 3.50, SD = .06), p = .079 (see Figure 3).

Figure 3. Differences in the Core, Middle and Outer motives among tourists with different origin and travel experience.

Note: Age was excluded since no significant difference was found between young and older tourists.

Discussion

The current study aimed to identify repeat travellers’ shifting motive patterns and to ascertain whether their travel patterns and motives differ from first time travellers within the TCP model. The findings cover the gap in the repeat tourism literature as well as in the TCP literature by revealing the shifting patterns of tourists’ motives with the number of visits they made. The findings are particularly useful in the Asian context as Asia has been the fastest growing destination region in the world tourism market (World Economic Forum, 2019). The study is first of its kind to provide an in-depth analysis of tourists’ motivation to visit India and to establish that international tourists are motivated to make repeat visits to India in spite of challenges and difficulties faced by tourists which are highlighted by not only researchers but also the popular media. An overview of the hypotheses testing results and findings are presented in Table 4.

Table 4. An overview of the results of hypothesis testing.

Hypothesis	Test results	Findings
H1: There will be a shift in the travel motives for repeat tourists with different number of visits	Confirm	As the number of visits increased middle and outer motives became more important
H2: The travel motives of the repeat tourists will vary with their socio-demographic characteristics	Confirm	Origin: Core and middle layer motives were more important for western tourists in comparison to Asian tourists Past travel experience: Middle layer motives were more important for more experienced tourists Age: No significant effects were found

A cross-sectional analysis of tourist motives was conducted on a large sample of repeat tourists with different number of visits to India. The present study confirms the first hypothesis that several conclusions present in the TCP motives literature are true for repeat tourists. As such, the results corroborate previous research conducted in Asia and Australia (Li et al., 2015; Oktadiana et al., 2017; Pearce & Lee, 2005). The TCP model which was verified more recently in Southeast Asia, could be precisely redrawn in the similar way with the same emphases for repeat tourists in India. That is, the importance attached to the motives varies in the same ways as in previous studies. The results suggest that overall, the core motives in the TCP model remain equally important for all tourists irrespective of the number of visits they made to India while employing a cross-sectional design. Hence, even for the tourists who were making their second, third or further visits, the core motives were consistently equally important. Since, the constituents of core motives are novelty, escape, relationship strengthening and relationship security, these results are consistent with the previous studies conducted in the context of previous travel experience (Pearce & Lee, 2005) and, here, extend the findings in the context of repeat visits.

Repeat visits to the same destination also form a unique experience and if the tourists go back to that destination, the core motives seem to remain equally important. These motives appear to be at the heart of any travel, even when tourists are more familiar with the destination (Caldeira & Kastenholz, 2018; Iversen et al., 2016; Rice & Khanin, 2019). Past research also demonstrated that novelty and relaxation are significant core characteristics across various segments and the current study has established these findings in the context of repeat tourists’ travel motive patterns. Therefore, the relationship between travel experience and travel motives holds up in the context of travel experience acquired after visiting a certain destination many times.

The examination of the middle layer motives of repeat tourists revealed that differences existed for the group who visited India twice compared to those who visited three times or more than four times. Middle layer motives, which includes nature, self-development (host-site involvement), self-development (personal development), and self-actualisation, were more important to tourists who had been visiting India three times or more when compared to those who had only been twice. For the outer layer motives, those who had travelled to India two, three or four times placed a stronger emphasis on the outer layer motives in comparison to the group who made more than four trips. The constituting factors for the outer layer motives are nostalgia, stimulation, and recognition and it is possible that these motives may remain relevant for less seasoned tourists as compared to highly experienced tourists. The shift in the TCP motives as seen in the overall current study is similar to that found in previous studies for the middle layer motives and outer layer motives. The results again accord with Pearce and Lee (2005), as well as Li et al. (2015) as it shows that low travel experience tourists place more emphasis on the outer layer motives compared to more experienced travellers in India. One predicted subtlety in the TCP model is that as tourists acquire substantially more experience there is a rise in the middle level motives. This result was confirmed for these repeat tourists to India and shown most clearly by those who had been to the country three or four or more times. Overall, these findings establish that the number of repeat visits to a certain destination is a powerful variable in adding insights into travel motives.

The study also investigated age, origin and past travel experiences related differences among the repeat tourists. Although no interactions effects or main effect of age variable were observed in the current sample, there were significant findings for origin and past travel experience confirming the second hypothesis. Both core and middle layer motives were more important for western tourists as compared to Asian tourists, however, no differences were reported for outer motives. The results are in line with those obtained in Oktadiana et al. (2017) where Asian and Western tourists reported differences on four key variables under core and middle layer motives. Consistent with their findings, outer layer motives (e.g. nostalgia, recognition), remain equally important for both Asian and Western tourists. Iversen et al. (2016) also found that Western tourists coming from individualistic culture favour novelty, relaxation and nature. The current study extend these findings in the context of repeat visits as well. The findings are particularly important in the context of Western tourists as the major share of India’s tourist arrival is from USA, UK, Canada and Australia. The specific understanding of travel motives of Western tourists provides further insight into their travel expectations and aspirations especially while visiting a unique Asian destination like India.

Previous studies have established a direct relationship between past travel experience and travel motives (Pearce & Lee, 2005). There were no differences in the outer motives for less experienced and more experienced tourists. This shows that all the tourists making multiple trips to India put equal emphasis on the outer motives. In the context of the findings for aim 1 where the relationship of multiple visits with outer motives showed that as the tourists make more than four visits, they do not find outer motives to be any more important. Conjointly, these findings show a consistent relationship between experience and travel motives in the context of repeat visitors to India.

Further, significant results were obtained for middle layer motives where more experienced tourists emphasized them more strongly as reported in previous studies (Pearce, 2014 Pearce & Lee, 2005). Surprisingly, the core motives were also found to be partially significant indicating that more experienced tourists focused more on core motives as compared to less experienced tourists. Similar results were found in the research on Chinese tourist’s motives pattern by Li et al. (2015). However, the partial significance could just be a statistical aberration and needs to be examined further in the repeat visit context.

The TCP model highlights that changing motive patterns are found with changing levels of experience and current findings support this theoretical notion. However, it is worth noting here that a significant number of tourists who repeat the most are also highly experienced as confirmed by the chi-square results. This link adds to the current findings that those TCP outcomes shaped by repeat visitation may also be influenced by greater levels of past travel experiences. Such findings stimulate researchers to explore more fully the ways in which multiple visits are affected by the types as well as the number of previous travel experiences outside the target destination.

Theoretical contributions

Several theoretical contributions of this study are noted. Firstly, the study offers a novel conceptual integration of the phenomenon of repeat tourism and the travel career pattern model in the tourism motivation field. Secondly, the study enriches the literature on Indian tourism, as research on Indian tourism such as motives for visiting India is still scant. The present research provides insight into the motivations that drive international tourists to revisit India. The results suggest that many tourists return to India mainly because of middle layer motives. More specifically, the middle layer motives nature, self-development (host-site involvement), self-development (personal development), and self-actualisation were identified as the most important factors for repeat visits. Thirdly, this study extends the tourism literature on repeat tourists in a broader Asian context. Fourth, this study adds another layer in repeat tourist behaviour research by adopting a cross-sectional design and systematically studying the motivation pattern of visitors with different number of visits. Finally, in broad terms, the results of the study enable the researchers to propose that multiple repeat visits to a country are driven by and follow the same motivation patterns. These patterns show that middle layer motives become increasingly important with the number of visits.

Practical contributions

Practical contributions of this study are three-fold. Firstly, the findings provide references for the destination managers and tourism business operators to design and develop tourism activities that appeal to tourists who favour nature, personal development, host-site involvement, and self-actualisation, by understanding the middle layer motives of travel. Secondly, the analysis of tourists’ travel career that highlights psychological motives may assist marketers to create marketing and promotional strategies to attract tourists returning to India. Thirdly, this study offers insights into the repeat tourist concept and framework that can be applied in other countries. Finally, studying travel career patterns of repeat visits to India offers a systematic line of enquiry to design a customer relationship management programme for creating long-lasting and sustainable relationship with repeat tourists.

Limitations and future directions

This study has certain limitations and the results must be interpreted cautiously within the context of the sample collected and the sampling approach employed while collecting data. The data were collected from a sample of select cities and tourist sites during peak travel seasons for international tourists. Future studies might consider a more diverse selection of sites and cities and explore patterns during non-peak tourist seasons. Since the concept of returning to India was operationalised as the ‘entire geographical location’ of India, further studies may utilise the vastness of India’s geographical positioning and may compare repeat tourists motives among tourists visiting same sites/location or different site/locations at each visit. There is further potential to distinguish co carefully between the travel careers of Western and Asian tourists. The view that tourists’ push-related motivational patterns are generic is worthy of ongoing detailed analysis, and even if many common factors exist, the differences in Asian travel biographies are likely to produce different motivational trajectories for Asian and Western repeat visitor cohorts. Another future research can compare the motives of the first time tourists and the repeat tourists.

Although, current cross-sectional studies provides valuable findings, a longitudinal study could provide further insight by following individual tourists across their multiple visits. Such work would complement cross-sectional findings. Further studies should explore the role of other determinants in the context of repeat tourism such as specific country of origin, their educational background, and the number of days spent during each visit. More analytical work relating these socio-demographic characteristics to the motive patterns may be useful to derive managerial implications from the findings. Overall, the current study provides a first overview of the motives driving international tourists to India. Clearly, many tourists are now making repeat visits to India and the present work offers an initial benchmark to explain motivess for their repeat tourism experiences.

Disclosure statement

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

Data availability statement

The data is available upon request to corresponding author.

Additional information

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Notes on contributors

Manisha Agarwal

Manisha Agarwal is full time staff at James Cook University, Singapore working as the Associate Lecturer. She is also enrolled under PhD programme at College of Business, Law and Governance at the James Cook University, Townsville, Australia. Her research interests include tourist behaviour and understanding of underlying psychological processes in tourists, in particular motivation, experience, satisfaction, and loyalty. She is also interested in understanding and using different methodology to learn more about tourist behaviour and tourism phenomenon.

Philip L. Pearce

Philip L. Pearce passed away in Australia on 10 August 2020. Philip Pearce was the first Professor of Tourism in Australia in 1990. He spent time at Harvard University as a Fulbright scholar and taught for concentrated periods at Universities in Italy, Austria, Thailand, Singapore and China. He wrote 15 books with tourism themes and had around 275 publications. He has been a keynote speaker at various international conferences published with a number of international partners.

Hera Oktadiana

Hera Oktadiana earned her Ph.D from the School of Hotel and Tourism Management, the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. She has been the Head of Hotel Management/ Hospitality and Tourism Departments at Bina Nusantara (BINUS) University and Bunda Mulia University, and Deputy Manager for the International Hotel and Tourism at Trisakti Institute of Tourism in Indonesia. She joined James Cook University, Australia as a Visiting Scholar (tourism research) in 2017 and currently working as Adjunct Associate Professor.

Abhishek Singh Bhati

Abhishek Singh Bhati is the Campus Dean of James Cook University, Singapore. Abhishek Bhati’s research investigates tourist behaviour management, resilience planning in tourism, sustainable development of cities and scholarship of learning and teaching. In particular, he is interested in technology and the role it has as a catalyst for tourism industry changes; ‘Smart City’ as a mechanism for future sustainable development; and the need for tourism to deliver United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Alexander Josiassen

Alexander Josiassen is Professor of Marketing at James Cook University, and Director of the Centre for Tourism and Culture Management, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark. He is a leading international scholar of marketing and tourism management. Alexander publishes in marketing and tourism in publications such as Journal of Marketing, Journal of Retailing, and in tourism in Annals of Tourism Research and Journal of Travel Research.