Exploring the Factors Affecting Greek People to Make Vacation in Greece: A preliminary Analysis

This paper reports results of a study aiming at exploring the factors affecting Greek people to make vacation in Greece. Through the study i) the main factors influencing Greek people in their choice about the tourist destination ii) consumers with similar buying behaviour were classified into groups and iii) each group of consumers was profiled according to their demographic characteristics and their preferences regarding their holidays. Field interviews were conducted in a randomly selected sample consisting of 102 people in Greece in November 2013. Principal Components Analysis (PCA) was performed to identify the main factors that affect Greek people to make vacation in Greece. These factors were: (a) vacation activities (b) natural environment and entertainment (c) travel connections and (c) culture. Hierarchical and non hierarchical cluster techniques were employed to classify consumers with similar consumption behaviour. Three groups of tourists were identified: (a) those interested in the vacation activities, (b) those interested in cultural issues, (c) those interested in travel connection. Discriminant Analysis was performed to assess how the identified main factors affecting Greek people to have holidays in Greece through PCA, could predict cluster membership. A non parametric test was used to profile each group of tourists according to their demographic characteristics.