Olive tourism: Understanding visitors' motivations

Abstract

Olive tourism is developing in the offer of tourism destinations as an important form of special interest tourism within gastronomy connecting visitors with olive oil and the culture of olive growing in the destinations they visit. The main objective of this paper is to understand the motivations of the visitors of an olive oil museum with its shop through qualitative and quantitative approaches. Qualitative data collection was carried out through in-depth interviews with visitors, while quantitative data collection was carried out through a survey and the data was analysed with a t-test and an exploratory factor analysis. The obtained results describe the average profile of visitors and established a significant difference among them with relation to the country of origin and the motives for visiting the museum. In general, the visitors coming from an olive oil production area were more motivated to visit the museum. Three basic components of motivation have been identified: 'Olive oil features', 'Enjoyment' and 'Novelties'.