Handbook of Tourist Behavior : Theory & Practice

In today’s highly competitive and global economy, understanding tourist behavior is imperative to success. Tourist behavior has become a cornerstone of any marketing strategy and action. Choosing, buying and consuming tourism/travel products and services includes a range of psycho-social processes and a number of personal and environmental influences that researchers and managers should take into account. This book provides an overview of such processes and influences and explains the basic concepts and theories that underlie tourist decision-making and behavior. It also incorporates a number of cases studies in order to aid readers to better appraise the application of those concepts and theories. The Handbook of Tourist Behavior will be of significant interest to researchers and students in tourism, leisure, marketing and psychology, and also to practitioners in the tourism industry.

Metin Kozak is Associate Professor in the School of Tourism and Hotel Management, Mugla University, Turkey. As a visiting scholar, he has recently been to the University of Namur, Belgium. He is the author of several books and has widely published in several tourism and hospitality journals.

Alain Decrop is Professor of Marketing at the Louvain School of Management and a member of CeRCLe (Center for Research on Consumption and Leisure) at the University of Namur, Belgium. His works have been published in journals such as Annals of Tourism Research, Tourism Management, the Journal of Travel and Tourism Marketing and Tourism Analysis, as well as in many books.