Indigenous tourism in Panama: segmenting international visitors

ABSTRACT

Tourists’ perspectives of Indigenous tourism and their preferences for this type of tourism experience are not fully explored, particularly in Latin-American contexts. Understanding these issues is crucial for helping Indigenous communities to meet existing and latent demand for their products and to leverage Indigenous community development opportunities. Using a psychographic segmentation methodology, international tourists in Panama who visited an Indigenous community were surveyed to understand their motivations to visit and expectations regarding the experience. Five different market segments emerged and the attributes of each are described.

KEYWORDS:

• Indigenous tourism
• tourist demand
• market segmentation
• Panama
• tourist motivations

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Rosario Chercoles

Rosario Chercoles studied tourism and hospitality management at Johnson & Wales University in Florida, and later completed her Masters’ in Tourism Leadership at the University of Queensland. She worked in nature-based and sustainable Indigenous tourism for four years, but her interest in hospitality and her passion for food led her to the culinary industry. She’s the founder of Casa Raffaello, an innovative artisanal and locally-sourced pasta restaurant in Panamá.

Lisa Ruhanen

Lisa Ruhanen is a Professor in Tourism and the Director of Education with the UQ Business School, The University of Queensland. She has undertaken more than 30 academic and consultancy research projects in Australia and overseas in the areas of Indigenous tourism, sustainable tourism and policy, planning and governance. Lisa has more than 100 academic publications and in 2017 she and colleagues co-edited a book on Indigenous Tourism: Cases from Australia and New Zealand.

Megan Axelsen

Megan Axelsen is a researcher for the University of Queensland and the University of Southern Queensland. The areas of research she is regularly involved include Indigenous tourism, sustainable tourism, ecotourism, and improving online student engagement in higher education. She has also been involved in projects examining pro-poor tourism, tourism in developing countries, knowledge transfer in tourism, numeracy in tertiary paramedicine education, learning analytics research in higher education, and learning and teaching in tertiary statistics education.

Karen Hughes

Karen Hughes is an Associate Professor in tourism at the University of Queensland’s Business School, Australia. She has taught and published in the areas of interpretation, visitor management, sustainable tourism, tourist behaviour and wildlife tourism. Karen has a particular interest in the design of interpretive signs and experiences in nature-based settings. Her latest research explores whether focusing on visitors’ values in the design of interpretive wildlife tourism experiences helps to both engage visitors and support their long-term adoption of conservation behaviours.