Do tourists experience boredom in mountain destinations?
Graphical abstract
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.
Section snippets
Theoretical background
Since the goal of this research is to investigate the extent to which tourists experience boredom during their winter mountain holidays, we are interested in a) segmenting them on the base of their perception of boredom, b) describing their profile also on the base of their values and motivations, c) analysing how they distribute their time between different activities, and d) measuring the expenses related to these activities.
Given that boredom perception is influenced by both personal and
Methodology
The framework of our research is organized in the following four steps (Fig. 1):
- 1.
segmentation of winter mountain tourists on the basis of their perceived boredom;
- 2.
analysis of the tourists' values and motivations in the identified segments;
- 3.
analysis of the activities practiced by segments;
- 4.
comparison of the expenses for each activity between segments.
Boredom is measured using the LBS scale, which consists of 16 items. In the present research only 14 of them were selected and were contextualized to
Segmentation of tourists on the basis of their perceived boredom
Tourists were segmented on the basis of their ratings on the LBS scale, framed as a 7-point agreement scale. The scale consists of 14 items (see Table 1), which respondents had to rate from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). The scale contains 6 items related to “excitement” and 8 items related to “boredom”; S.E. Iso-Ahola and Weissinger (1990) alert to reverse the coding of the excitement items to make them coherent with the boredom items to subsequently operate a factor analysis.
Implications for management in winter mountain destinations
The segmentation of a sample of winter mountain tourists on the basis of their LBS scores results in five segments, with two of them experiencing boredom during their holiday. They are the smallest segments: 12% are the Bored tourists, and 9% are the Excited-Bored tourists. Individuals of the second segment experience some boredom during their stay, but the feeling of boredom does not prevent them from engaging in the many activities that the place offers. Boredom is related neither to
Conclusions, limitations and avenues for future research
The goal of this paper was to shed some light on the existence of tourists who experience boredom during their holiday. The empirical research conducted in a winter mountain region confirms the existence of two segments of tourists who experience boredom in their holiday, which together make 21% of the tourists. The perception of boredom does not exclude the feeling of excitement, neither the participation in the many activities that the place offers, an evidence that at first sight may appear
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to express special thanks to Elena Irina Ungureanu, who hepled them to develop the survery.
Chiara Mauri works on marketing and retailing, and in particular on brand management, place branding, category management, and loyalty management.
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