Business & Tourism Management

Understanding the Tourist

Learning outcome 1: Define the various tourist types identified within a range of Tourist Type models;

Learning outcome 2: Examine tourist destinations and tourist attractions that meet the needs of various tourist types;

Learning outcome 3: Reflect & identify which tourist types, destinations and activities apply to the individual in the case study

Assignment Requirements

Overview

When designing a new product or service all industries start in the same place - what do the customers want or need. The tourism industry is the same and the key for this industry is tourist types. This assignment brief is designed to help you explore this concept as it is a key skill managers within the industry must have, you will also be able to demonstrate how well you understand the concept of how tourism businesses use tourist types by not only using research and examples of tourist types that link to destinations and attractions, but you will also apply the tourist type theory to yourself and your travel habits - this will give a more in-depth understanding of how a tourist makes decisions that are influenced by the tourist companies.

Assignment task/s to be completed

The Tourism Industry designs most of the products and services it offers based on tourist type, this is how they ensure that they can sell their products to the right customer at the right time. The knowledge used by the industry to do this is based on tourist type theories, and the many different types of tourists is the reason larger tourism companies own several types of products, rather than specialising in one tourist type - this provides a means of making more profit from a larger market share.

Write an essay that explains how tourist type theories link to destinations and attractions, and also identifies which tourist type you are most suited based on theory, and the types of destinations and attractions you usually visit.

Introduction (150 words)

This section requires you to introduce the main concepts and theories of your essay to successfully complete this task:
Step one: define the term tourist and include an in-text citation. For example, (UNWTO, 2010)
Step two: provide a brief explanation of the Tourist typologies studied in this module, for example Plog's Model(1974), Simith (1977) and Cohen's Classification of Tourist(1972).
Step three: Outline the aim and structure of your essay.

Main Body Paragraph (600 words )

This paragraph requires you to explain how tourist type theories link to destinations and attractions. You will need to use the relevant tourist type theories to identify how destinations ensure that they can sell their products to the right customer at the right time to successfully complete this task:
Step 1: choose 2 different types of destinations from 2 varying locations in the world, such as a coastal destination and a city destination, or a countryside location or adventure resort.
Step 2: research, using only the destination's official tourist websites to find out what type of attractions, hotels and other tourist services are available. These sites can include attraction websites, hotel websites, visitor guides, tourist boards for example.
Step 3: using the official destination tourist board website find the tourist type statistics for your chosen destination, such as VisitBritain.Org.
Step 4: using citations, identify and provide evidence that tourism companies at your chosen destinations use tourist typologies to plan their tourism packages. You must make sure that the research that you use proves the points you are trying to make about the destination and the type of tourist that visit it.

Main Body Paragraph (600 words )

Step One: Identify one or two tourist typologies such as allocentric, explorer or individual mass tourist that describes you better as a tourist.
Step two: Based on the research, you must explain why you are that particular tourist type (Holloway, J. C. and Humphreys, C. (2022) The Business of Tourism. 12th edn. London: Sage Publications Ltd. - Chapter 3 - pg51- pg 74)
Step three: Use your past travel experience to provide examples and evidence of what you do before, during and after you travel to a particular destination. You must link everything you do in the whole process with the tourist type that describes you better as a tourist.
Step four: Using citations, you must explain the complexity of the decision-making process in the tourism sector and how the tourist typologies help you to understand your own behaviour as a tourist ( Fletcher, J., Fyall, A., Gilbert, D. and Wanhill, S. (2018) Tourism: Principles and Practice. 6th edn. Harlow:
Pearson Education Limited.

Conclusions (150 words )

This section requires you to summarise the above discussion to demonstrate how your chosen tourist type and models are linked to the destinations and attractions that you prefer to visit based on your last travel experience. You will need to use the relevant research to demonstrate how successful tourist destinations or tourism businesses are using this tourist type theories and models to ensure they can sell their products to the right customer at the right time to successfully complete this task:
Step one: provide evidence to demonstrate how successful destinations and tourism business are using the tourist type theories and models to design their products and services and meet tourist's needs and wants.

References

List all the sources you have used using Harvard referencing style. convention. Please note that you should include every website you visited and every book you have used. If you have not used the information but just read it, do not include that in the list.
Your list should have a minimum of 10 pieces of research. Every webpage and every page in the books count as a separate piece of research.

Harvard Referencing Style.