Travel Motivation as Related to Demographics i.e., Sex, Age, and Education are given below:
While considering travel motivations from the viewpoint of social statistics of populations (demographics) there are three areas namely, sex, age and education in which individual differences become important and, therefore, need to be contemplated.
Differences on account of sex crop up owing in principle to two distinct factors role conflict and training differences. The males particularly may have a dissension between professional/ business and family positions and roles resulting in conflicts relating to appropriation of time and energy between the two.
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In order to avoid the frictions, in all probability, they may do their best to keep the two spheres of their lives independent and separate. Conversely, in case of the female, the norm is rather clear in many societies and countries as in case of such a conflict, home and family usually comes first.
Nevertheless, the fact is that in the modern times, the roles are changing radically and thereby the differences between the male and the female in training, motivations, and interests perspectives are loosing their sharpness that existed in the past.
However, when the kids and little ones are involved, their needs are likely to influence the motivations and choices of both the parents as a whole.
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Further, age can be another factor that can be critically instrumental in influencing the nature of experiences having a magnetic pull for an individual. For instance, in the early life of the life cycle i.e., the adolescence or youth stage, the youth especially, being receptive to new ideas, interested in newer places, and possibly less prone to humiliation and self-consciousness in differing social situations, may have a great endurance for all types of new experiences.
For the people belonging to middle age group, having achieved a certain position and status, wishes for the comforts to be in keeping with his/her position i.e., comfort factor may be relatively of more weight. Besides another consideration for the many is the desire to travel jointly or in company.
The forces governing such a desire may be the heightened inherent need for social comparison and camaraderie, and the reduced need for exploration emerging mainly from the feeling of being more secure and being with the familiar.
Again, there is every possibility that in the later years of life i.e., old age, a person usually develops an extended forbearance for steadiness and a turning inward, a tendency to be self-centered. However, this is also a fact that there is no particular age for being so and even it may never occur.
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Furthermore, the differences in educational level also influence the nature and extent of new experiences acceptable to a person. While considering such differences, it must betaken into account that these are interwoven with elements like socio-economic standing and economy level.
It has been observed that individuals with higher level of education by and large earn more money and are of higher status in comparison to those with lower educational level. The people belonging to the former category comprising mainly business executives and management personnel are, progressively mobile and initiator of most of social change, more inclined to appreciate change in their environment as they are ever willing to take a chance and go to an unfamiliar place.
They themselves are interested in travel and need not have to be sold on any specific travel concept. Most of the times, they pose a challenge to people specializing in tourist services in terms of these being unable to provide a genuinely innovative experience.
Interestingly another market segment entering the sphere of travel is the fast emerging middle class at the global level. For a section of this segment, contrary to the rest, while income has raised status, the interests of this population segment may continue to be alike those of previous generation i.e., parents who had little travel opportunity and with less experience.
This market segment, therefore, has to be persuaded or sold on the idea of travel in spite of his/her needs for security and concern with travel behaviour. In contrast, a person with lower level of education is the most static and may not travel at all as he is extremely conscious of familiarity and social appearance, feeling himself less cultured than even the average traveller, even if there is nothing of the sort.
Such an attitude is not because the person feels like holding on to the pattern, but because of the inherent fear of insecurity in trying something new. As with the middle class segment, this class has to be assured that an unfamiliar situation does not necessarily promote insecurity.
Of late, there have been a number of studies on various dimensions of travel and tourism suggesting several premisis and propositions. Of these, mention may be made of a few especially, the one by Cohen (1978) in terms of a five-fold classification of tourism based on modes of tourist experiences, and another by Smith (1977) structured on types of tourism.
The two conceptual bases for the classification of and motivations for, tourism have been the subject of several all-out and intensive, follow-up studies on motivational perceptions and satisfaction of tourists.