Tourist Typologies and Tourist Motivations Essay

Tourist Typologies and Tourist Motivations - Essay Example Closely related to tourist motivation are tourist typologies. Tourist typologies refers to the profiles of groups of people with similar travel needs and requirements. Tourist typologies are closely related to tourist motivations because originally tourist motivations were used in constructing tourist typologies. This is true with the work of many early writers especially Cohen.Different authors have come up with different versions of constructing tourist typologies. Cohen(1972),categorized tourists into four types. The first category is what he called ‘organized’ mass tourists. This type of tourists buy their holiday package and after that they follow the decisions and programs of their tour operators. They interact less with the host community and confine themselves in an ‘environmental bubble’. An environmental bubble is what surrounds the tourist ‘from the security of which they observe and experience the strangeness of the host environment’ making the tourist to taste the new environment without being overwhelmed by it.(Cohen 1972)The second type of tourist is the ‘individual mass tourist’. This type, unlike the organized mass tourist,have some control of their own programs although, like the organized mass tourist, they use the facilities provided by their tour operators. Again, many individual mass tourists visit ‘sights’ in much the same way as organized mass tourists.(Cohen 1972)The third type of tourists is the ‘explorer’ .This type of tourist i s much more independent than the above two types. ... many early writers especially Cohen. Different authors have come up with different versions of constructing tourist typologies. Cohen(1972),categorized tourists into four types. The first category is what he called 'organized' mass tourists. This type of tourists buy their holiday package and after that they follow the decisions and programs of their tour operators. They interact less with the host community and confine themselves in an 'environmental bubble'. An environmental bubble is what surrounds the tourist 'from the security of which they observe and experience the strangeness of the host environment' making the tourist to taste the new environment without being overwhelmed by it.(Cohen 1972) The second type of tourist is the 'individual mass tourist'. This type, unlike the organized mass tourist ,have some control of their own programs although, like the organized mass tourist , they use the facilities provided by their tour operators. Again, many individual mass tourists visit 'sights' in much the same way as organized mass tourists.(Cohen 1972)The third type of tourists is the 'explorer' .This type of tourist is much more independent than the above two types. The explorer makes his own programs on where he wants to go and visit. He associates himself more with the local people and many a times speaks the language of the local people although he still puts up in comfortable hotels. He sticks to the things he does in his daily life. (Cohen 1972). The last type of tourists according to Cohen is the 'drifter'. The drifter will live with the community. He gets embedded in their culture and even earns his income from the community often by doing low skilled jobs. This helps him to easily mix with the