Do tourists experience boredom in mountain destinations?

Highlights

• Boredom is a feeling perceived during winter mountain holiday.

• Bored tourists are not unimaginative relaxers, but rather very active.

• Leisure and boredom can coexist during winter mountain holiday.

• Five segments of tourists are identified on the basis of the binarized LBS.

Abstract

The paper investigates the extent to which tourists perceive boredom during their winter mountain holiday. The Leisure Boredom Scale (S.E. Iso-Ahola & Weissinger, 1990) was applied to segment tourists on the base of their perceived boredom. An empirical research operated in an Alpine region revealed the existence of two segments who experience boredom: Bored tourists and Excited-Bored tourists (21% of the tourists). This evidence contradicts results found in previous literature that boredom is associated to passive behaviour, and shows that boredom co-exists with excitement. The majority of these tourists are mothers accompanying their relatives, stay in hotels, and choose either the chief town Aosta or minor locations. Bored tourists are involved in many activities, and spend even more than other tourists.

Introduction

A recent empirical study performed in three mountain destinations with the objective of understanding tourist preferences for different holiday packages, unexpectedly revealed that a significant portion of winter mountain tourists perceived their holidays as monotonous. Despite describing their vacation as monotonous, the days of these tourists appeared full of many different activities, none of which seemed to dominate. This group represented 10% to 23% of the tourists depending on the destination, and included many women accompanying their relatives and friends (Mauri and Turci, 2018, Mauri, 2019) .

To the best of our knowledge, no studies have been conducted to investigate the boredom experience in tourism. Thus, the goals of our research are to measure the existence of boredom during winter mountain holiday and to investigate its intensity and the extent to which boredom translates into passive behaviour.

On the one side, tourism per se is almost always interpreted as a positive and exciting leisure experience (Morgan et al., 2010; Smith & Godbey, 1991) to be lived, remembered and recounted (Kim et al., 2012); on the other side, boredom has often been analysed more as a feeling that stimulates tourism rather than a feeling perceived while practicing it (Iso-Ahola and Weissinger, 1990, Lee and Crompton, 1992, Ryan and Glendon, 1998) .

However, leisure is not always a satisfactory freedom and may carry the risk of boredom (Iso-Ahola and Weissinger, 1990). Tourism, as well as leisure, can be considered an unstructured time, or at least a time much less busy than daily routine; hence, tourists may perceive that they have too much time on their hands with too little to do to fill that time (Iso-Ahola and Weissinger, 1987, Shaw et al., 1995). This sensation may be further enhanced in all the situations in which tourists feel compelled to participate in outer-directed activities, or in activities that they consider frustrating and/or monotonous (Hill & Perkins, 1985).

Winter mountain destinations may represent an ideal context to study if, and how much, tourists experience boredom during their holiday. The predominance of outdoor recreation and snow sports, paired with shorter daylight hours and more severe weather conditions, may significantly limit tourist activities. Moreover, winter mountain destinations are relatively calmer and quieter environments compared to other holiday destinations (Silva et al., 2013); spaces are more constrained and often almost all the attractions are within arm's reach. These characteristics leave more free time to fill, and potentially “too much time available and too little to do” (Iso-Ahola and Weissinger, 1990). Eventually, the only empirical evidence which suggests the potential existence of a boredom perception during holidays emerged right in winter mountain destinations (Mauri, 2019).

Given these considerations, the goal of this paper is to shed some light on boredom as the neglected side of the tourism experience: do tourists experience boredom during their winter mountain holidays? Are bored tourists passive tourists (Derek et al., 2019) or unimaginative relaxers (Ryan & Glendon, 1998)? Or, on the contrary, do they engage in the same or even more varied activities than non-bored tourists? How much are they satisfied with their holiday? Do they spend more or less money than non-bored tourists? An empirical research made on a sample of tourists during their winter mountain holiday tries to address these questions.