ABSTRACT
In today’s highly competitive and global economy, understanding tourist behaviour and consumption is crucial both for private companies, public operators and citizens. First, leisure and travel companies have to narrowly understand the needs and desires of their target customers as a key aim and critical success factor. Designing, communicating, and selling a product or service is diffi cult if it does not match consumers’ expectations. Understanding tourist behaviour is important for public operators as well in order to effectively address consumers’ wishes and to develop relevant laws and policies for informing and protecting them. Finally, understanding behaviour and consumption is also useful for tourists and travellers themselves. It may help them to make ‘good’ decisions or to be more critical towards commercial information sources that are likely to infl uence their preferences and choices.
