Exploring change in Asia Pacific tourism markets

Abstract

Predicted changes in patterns of tourism and tourist markets are commonplace in the tourism management literature. Yet few studies have explored either the validity of these predictions or how they might influence tourist behaviour at the destination itself. This paper seeks to address this gap by exploring changes in different geographic markets to the Great Barrier Reef in Australia over a five year period from 1996-2001. The results of the analyses of more than 4100 surveys indicated that only a few of the predicted trends in tourism applied to this destination. Further, changes over time were found to differ significantly between the five groups. A preliminary conceptual model is presented to describe how general trends may be influenced by the geographic origin of visitors to produce unique patterns of tourism at the destination.