Escape - The Real Motivation for Leisure Travel

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2009 in the subject Tourism - Miscellaneous, grade: 1,0, University of Applied Sciences Bremerhaven, language: English, abstract: Human behaviour is one of the most interesting topics to be studied, but also one of the most complex. But who would not be relieved if he would know the reason why humans sometimes behave as they do? Especially in the field of tourism, a domain of intense human interaction, where offering services is the core activity of most businesses, it would be quite favourable to predict how potential customers or business partners do react; or if the extensive marketing spending has the desired impact. Consequently, this work focuses on the topic of human motivation, particularly on the motivation of travelling behaviour, drawing attention to a field that is as diverse as the ways it can be approached. Tourism researchers usually refer to an established set of theories and models to describe motivated behaviour, of which Maslow's 'Hierarchy of Needs' probably is the most renowned. But considering its year of publication, it is remarkable that there is no established contemporary approach to behavioural research. Accordingly, the objective of this work is to develop a theoretical model relating the variety of leisure travel elements to as few as possible underlying motivations, being responsible for thriving one of the biggest industrial sectors of the world. Research was carried out by undertaking in-depth interviews in the context of grounded theory methodologies, investigating the travel behaviour, experiences and motives of a small sample, detecting relations and dependencies, and drawing according conclusions. Based on the analysed data a theoretical model emerged, defining the motivation for any leisure travel activities as psychological escape, an instinctive reflex to a temporary dissatisfaction caused by a variety of influences.