Authors: Athina Nella, Maria Tsaketa
Title: How is tourism behavior being shaped after two years of pandemic? Evidence from Greece
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic has had major impact on tourism demand, tourism supply and policy makers; tourism behavior and responses varied during the three pandemic stages (response, recovery and reset) but still the pandemic can be perceived a transformational opportunity for tourism stakeholders (Sigala, 2020). Zenker & Kock (2020) noted that the pandemic may subconsciously reshape not only tourist but also resident behaviour. In this vein, a number of scholars have studied the impact of the pandemic in various aspects of tourist behaviour (e.g. Rather, 2021; Itani & Hollebeek, 2021; Boto-García & Leoni, 2021; Kim et al., 2021; Miao et al., 2021; Park et al., 2021; Sánchez-Pérez et al., 2021; Mary & Pour, 2022). Zenker et al. (2021) proposed a pandemic anxiety travel scale (PATS) while Gupta et al. (2022) claimed that main factors relating to destination decision making were health and hygiene, safety and security, accessibility and connectivity, information about destination, travel risk perception, and value for money. Moreover, Lu et al. (2022) examined the role of virtual tourism to conclude that it may have a strong influence on on-site destination choices and can be used as an effective promotional tool for destinations.
In order to explore and identify main contemporary tourism behavior patterns among the Greek population a survey was designed and implemented in the period March-April 2022; its main purpose was to identify major travel motivations, intentions and social influences of tourism behavior after two consecutive years of pandemic. A structured questionnaire was used based on the relevant study of Jin et al. (2022), who aimed to profile Chinese consumers regarding their post-pandemic travel; thus cross-national comparability of findings could also be feasible afterwards. A convenience sample of 200 respondents was used in the survey.
The strongest post-pandemic travel motives were the following: “to rejuvenate both mentally and physically” (4,3/5), “to relief from stress” (4,2/5), “to get away from daily routine” (4,2/5) and “to relax from tension and pressure caused by the pandemic” (4/5). The least popular motives were “to visit a destination that could impress my friends” (2,45/5) and “to increase my tourist spending so as to contribute to the industry recover as well” (2,54/5). As for short-term travel intentions, the most popular choices were a) Greek destinations that respondents could reach by car (4,1/5), b) Greek destinations that respondents could reach by plane or ferry (3,6/5) and c) short-haul destinations abroad (3,4/5). Long-haul destinations were the least preferred among respondents (2,7/5). As for consumer responses in marketing activities, the most positive attitudes were expressed for promotional offers in airline or ferry tickets (4,1/5) and hotel promotional offers (3,9/5) while the least positive attitudes were expressed for early booking promotional offers for group packages (3,18/5). The study confirms a significant impact on tourism behaviour of Greeks with great opportunities for domestic tourism. In terms of practical implications, the study reveals numerous marketing opportunities to be seized by tourism and travel organizations in order to satisfy the post-pandemic tourism demand.
