Profiling Tourists who have Holidays in the Region of Eastern Macedonia and Thrace in Greece

This paper aims to profile the tourists who have holidays in the Region of Eastern Macedonia and Thrace (REMTh) in Greece regarding the factors affecting them in choosing their travel destination and sources of information and demographic characteristics. In particular the main factors influencing tourists to choose REMTh as tourist destination were identified. Furthermore tourists with similar buying behaviour were classified into groups; each group of tourists was profiled according to their preferences regarding their holidays and their demographic characteristics. Field interviews were conducted in a randomly selected sample consisting of 265 people in REMTh in summer 2013. Principal Components Analysis (PCA) was performed to identify the main factors that affect tourists to make vacation in REMTh. These factors were: (a) Travel connections and tourist infrastructures (b) natural environment (c) vacation activities, (d) entertainment, (e) culture and (f) value for money. Hierarchical and non hierarchical cluster techniques were employed to classify tourists with similar behaviour. Three groups of tourists were identified: (a) those interested in the vacation activities, entertainment and culture (b) opportunists, (c) those interested in natural environment and (d) those interested in travel connections, tourist infrastructures and value for money. Discriminant Analysis was performed to assess how the identified main factors affecting tourists to have holidays in REMTh through PCA, could predict cluster membership. A non parametric test was used to profile each group of tourists regarding their holidays and their demographic characteristics.