Travel Personae of American Pleasure Travelers: A Network Analysis

Travel style has been shown to be a useful concept for understanding travelers. In this study it is argued that the portfolio of trips (specifically, the portfolio of various trip styles) one takes can be used to describe his/her overall travel persona. Network analysis was used to examine the structural relationships between types of trips based upon the assumption that each travel style may be considered as a “node,” and its association with other travel styles may be represented by the links within the network. Analyses indicate that American travelers take on a wide range of different travel personae which, in turn, are related to their choices of places visited and their response to advertising materials. It was concluded that the framework provided by these findings along with new tools on the Internet offer the potential to develop highly personalized communications with existing and potential visitors.