Dunne, G: Motivation and Decision Making in City Break Trave

The demand for city breaks has been one of the major growth areas in travel and tourism in recent years. The city break product is generally considered to be different from other holiday products, particularly in a spatial and temporal context. However marketing strategies targeting this important tourism niche continue to be based on data that is often anecdotal and frequently inaccurate. This book explores the distinctive characteristics of this form of travel and in particular the motivations and decision making involved in taking such trips. The book presents a decision making continuum that highlights the variation that exists between different types of trips. The city break trip is shown to have a number of important characteristics which influence the travel decision. These include trip duration, date flexibility, travel party composition, discretionary nature, and travel distance. The findings provide an important insight into one of the most significant yet least examined travel segments in tourism research and should be of benefit to both academics and practitioners in the tourism marketing field as well as stakeholders in the urban tourism sector.