Mountain tourism and motivation: millennial students’ seasonal preferences

Abstract

This study aimed to identify the motivations that lead a particular sub-group of the millennial generation, namely, university students, to choose mountain areas as tourism destinations both in winter and summer. Through a focus group and a questionnaire survey targeting Italian millennial students (n = 2,292), we first identified the main motivations that drive this choice. Second, we identified the level of importance for each motivation during both seasons. The findings revealed that millennials are guided by six main motivations in choosing mountain areas as travel destinations, each of which play different roles according to the considered season. The only exception is represented by the category of food and beverage, which is not influenced by seasonality. The results contribute to the literature on tourism and millennials, giving insight on the motivations that drive millennials' choices. Moreover, the results are relevant from a managerial point of view by providing important indications to managers and policy makers on the determinants of millennials' decisions.

Effect of utilitarian and hedonic values on consumer willingness to buy and to pay for organic olive oil in Tunisia

“…To collect data, a self-administrated questionnaire was used in this study. Before the final data collection, a preliminary survey was administrated in order to assess the clarity of the questionnaire and its suitability for the respondents (Giachino et al, 2019;Yadav and Pathak, 2016). A dozen of questionnaires were distributed to research scholars in the department in which the author works.…”

Tourism Development in Inner Mountain Areas—The Local Stakeholders’ Point of View through a Mixed Method Approach

“…These tools have to comply with the needs of the environment, reinforce the cultural and social sustainability and improve the local proactivity [140][141][142]. Moreover, it is appropriate to focus on the promotion of the valley, with an offering that takes into account tourists' demands, particularly the ones of future generations [34,35], but that enhances also the territory and local productions, for example, through a local brand implementation.…”

“…Indeed, food and wine heritage can be considered an essential resource to create appeal and support the tourism offering. Several authors indicate local food as an element of tourist attraction either in terms of consumption [29,30], heritage and territorial characterization [31][32][33], and, in some cases, it is identified as a travel motivation [34] in mountain areas [35]. Food and wine are also elements of attraction for specific population classes, significant from the point of view of consumption levels, such as the Millennials [29,34,35].…”

Mountain Landscape Preferences of Millennials Based on Social Media Data: A Case Study on Western Sichuan

“…Tourism in mountain areas, after a long period of economic success and deep environmental transformation [6], has to be rediscovered [7]. The motivation stems from the importance of the attractiveness of tourism resources to tourists and plays a key role in tourism sustainability [8].…”

“…Cavagnaro et al reported that millennials demonstrate interest in themes such as natural resources and prefer destinations with significant natural resources [20][21][22][23][24][25]. Giachino et al [7] found seasonal differences in the millennials' choice of nature tourism destinations. Tieskens et al [26,27] demonstrated that analytical studies on elements of mountain cultural landscapes are of high research value in exploring tourists' preferences for mountain landscapes.…”