Film-induced senior tourism and destination loyalty

ABSTRACT

The senior tourist niche is distinct from other tourist cohorts in terms of expenditure, service preference, and other destination appeals. This is a unique segment, requiring destination management/marketing organisations’ attention to film-induced tourism in particular. However, the intersection between film tourism and the nostalgic desires of seniors has seldom been explored. Surveying 366 film-induced senior tourists to Croatia, the dimensional nature of the film tourism experiencescape was uncovered. A structural modeling procedure further showed that the film tourism experiencescape strongly predicted cognitive loyalty, which significantly influenced affective loyalty. Destination loyalty stage theory fitted well with senior film tourism destinations. This study has academic implications relating to the experiencescape concept and loyalty theory, and can help film destination marketers to understand seniors’ psychological mechanisms in experiencing film-related destinations and developing destination loyalty.

KEYWORDS:

• Film
• TV drama
• senior
• experiencescape
• destination loyalty
• image

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Heesup Han

Heesup Han is a Daeyang Distinguished Professor in the College of Hospitality and Tourism Management at Sejong University, Korea. His research interests include sustainable tourism, green hotels, cruise, airline, medical tourism, digital currency, the Fourth Industrial Revolution and hospitality and tourism marketing.

Felix E. Otoo

Felix E. Otoo is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Hospitality and Tourism Management, at Macau University of Science and Technology. His research interests include tourist behaviour, culinary tourism, tourism marketing and senior tourism.

Seongseop (Sam) Kim

Seongseop (Sam) Kim is a Professor at the School of Hotel and Tourism Management at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. His research interests include tourism impacts, sustainability, new technology and tourism, event/convention tourism and tourism and hospitality marketing.

Aleksandar Radic

Aleksandar Radić is an independent researcher and tourism and hospitality practitioner. He received his Ph.D. in management and business from Singidunum University. His research interests include cruise tourism, hospitality and tourism marketing, pro-environmental behaviour, consumer behaviour, public health, sustainability, corporate social responsibility and blockchain technology.

Wei Quan

Wei Quan is a researcher in the College of Hospitality and Tourism Management at Sejong University, Korea. Her research interests include blockchain technology, hospitality marketing, pet tourism, digital currency and consumer/traveller behaviour.

Sang-Mook Lee

Sang-Mook Lee is an Associate Professor at the department of tourism management at Jeju National University. His research interests include tourism management, tourism marketing, customer behaviour and hospitality management.