Tourists return intentions: A mixed logit approach

Abstract

Why and how tourists decide to revisit the same destination is a topic that still deserves further research. This is the aim of this paper that examine return behavioural intentions of tourists, considering motivations, trip characteristics, and disentangling nationalities and individual characteristics to account for the heterogeneity of tourists. The empirical research was conducted with a sample of 1,212 British and German tourists who had visited Algarve in 2009, by means of a mixed logit model. The results of this study, aside from confirming that pull motivational factors exert more influence on destination return intentions than push motivational factors, show that the profile and intentions of German and British tourists are quite heterogeneous. The managerial implications of these findings are discussed.