Influence of Socio Economic Profile on Foreign Visitors in Negros Occidental

INTRODUCTION

        According to (Ninemeier & Perdue, 2005; Cooper & Hall, 2008) the tourism industry is considered one of the largest and fastest growing industries in the world.  For the tourism industry to maintain or improve its status, it is dependent on tourists “travel decisions”.  Papatheodorou (2006) stated that the destination choice has always been an important impact in tourism literature and there are various factors influencing travel decisions.  These factors involved nationality, travel motivations, finances, age, gender preference and previous experiences (Ankomah, Crompton & Baker, 1996).

        Travel motivation is an essential part of ravel behaviour and has been widely researched and applied in tourism marketing strategies.  “The need to see the unseen and know the unknown drives people to travel to new places and motivates them to visit new destinations” (Venkatesh, 2006).

        According to Crompton (1979) the reasons why people travel is difficult to explore.  Moreover, Buck (1978) argued that “difficulties of understanding travel motivation may result in tourists ‘unawareness’ of their reasons to travel”.  Dann (1981) further divided this difficulty into four categories:

        The unwillingness of tourists to reflect on real travel motives, which implies “intellectual laziness or competing time demands on the part of the tourists”.  The inability of tourists to reflect on real travel motives, according to Crompton (1969) is inability which can be derived from the lack of familiarity with the process of reflection or the loss of memory or chronological confusion (Gordon, 1969).  The unwillingness of tourists to express real travel motives, is called an inhibitor of communication (Gordon, 1969).  Tourists are willing or able to reflect but may still not wish to reveal the real reasons of their fear.  The inability of tourists to express real motives is a difficulty which is often encountered by field-workers dealing with inarticulate people.

        According to (Jamal and Lee, 2003), many researchers suggested the adoption of interdisciplinary approaches to explore travel motivation which requires the understanding of motivation from multidisciplinary perspectives to the aforementioned difficulties.

        Kim – (1998) stated that most of the current tourism research on motivation has been conducted within the Western context, which is mainly focused on individualism and rationalism as important values without conscious awareness.  Some studies have been conducted to explore the travel motivations of tourists from different cultural backgrounds after recognizing the cultural differences in ravel motivation (e.g., Jang, Yu, & Pearson, 2003; N. Kim & Chalip, 2004) and to compare the travel motivation among tourists of different nationalities (e.g., Kozak, 2002; Yuan & McDonald, 1990).  Another similar study is on the factor-cluster analysis of tourist motivations of American senior travellers conducted in Thailand wherein it investigates the travel motivations of U.S senior travellers to Thailand by adopting the theory of push and pull motivations.  Moreover, this study examines the possibility of segmenting the U.S senior target market by utilizing attribute-based benefits segmentation (Sangpikul et al., 2008)

        As of today, as reviewed in the literature, there are few local studies conducted on the travel motivation of foreigners in the Philippine setting. One example is the “The Determinants of Korea’s Inbound Tourism to the Philippines” (Rufino, 2016).  Wherein the researcher identified the determination of the factors that shape Korean demand for Philippine tourism and the formulation of time series models that may help predict future Korean arrivals.  

Therefore, this study is pursued to gather relevant data that deals with the influence of the participant’s socio-economic profile and what role it plays in motivation to foreign visitors in Negros Occidental.  This study attempts to determine their awareness and on what specific reasons motivates the participants before coming to the province.  It also aims to know the perceptions and how aware were the participants in regards to the availability of different facilities and activities which the province offers.

Statement of the Problem

This study aims to determine the influence of the socio economic profile on the travel motivation of foreign travellers in Negros Occidental. Specifically, it seeks to answer the following questions:

1. What is the socio-economic profile of foreign visitors in terms of:

1. Age;
2. Sex;
3. Civil Status;
4. Nationality;
5. Occupation and;
6. Income?

1. What are the reasons of the participants in visiting Negros Occidental?
2. What are the factors being considered by participants in visiting Negros Occidental?
3. What places in Negros Occidental attract the participants the most?
4. Where do the participants stay when in Negros Occidental?
5. How much do the participants spend per visit in Negros Occidental?

Conceptual Framework

The participants’ profile was gathered in terms of age, sex, civil status, nationality, occupation, and income.  The information regarding the participants’ personal profile was used to determine their relationship with the different factors affecting or influencing participants to travel to Negros Occidental and where do usually participants go to when travelling in Negros.  The participants’ socio-economic profile was also used to determine their relationship with different factors of the objectives of the study.  Each of the participants was provided different factors to check and provide results to the study what motivates them to travel Negros Occidental. Different situations and questions relating to the familiarity of the different travel destinations and on how much they usually spend during their vacation in Negros were a provided in the participant’s survey for them to indicate influences of their socio-economic profile affecting their decision to travel Negros Occidental.  The relationship between the different socio-economic profile of the participants and the different factors that affect the decisions and motivations of foreign travellers will determine on what type of profile classification the participants would belong into.  This profile classification would benefit in segmenting what type of travellers the province have.  This is essential in indicating what best promotional strategy would best fit their needs and provide right satisfaction to the foreign travellers.  This The gathered data was analysed by the researchers using statistical tools to provide evidences about the essential role of different factors influencing the participants to travel, as well as proposed recommendations for developing tourism strategies and plans, to enhance the level of satisfaction of international tourists and encourage them to return to Negros in the near future.