The Tourism Market and Tourist Behaviors - Influenced by Distance Decay in Hk

The Tourism Market and Tourist Behaviors

Influenced by Distance Decay in HK

 Chole 2013212079  

Nina 2013211940

                    Kiki 2013211905

 Zach 2013212154

                    Linda 2013211983

Table of contents                              

1. Introduction        

2. Main Body        

2.1 Long Haul Market to Hong Kong.        

2.2 Short Haul Market to Hong Kong        

2.3 Culture Distance        

3. Conclusion        

4. Reference        

1. Introduction

With the development of transportation and the improvement of tourism environment, more people choose to travel further place than before. Hong Kong as a Special Administration Region in China always attracts visitors not only from short haul markets, but also from long haul markets. It is the third largest financial centre in the world after New York and London.  Hong Kong is famous for the freedom economy, the good public security and the perfect legal system.  Tourism as a pillar industry makes a great contribution to GDP in Hong Kong.  

In this article, we will discuss the differences about visitor’s profiles between long haul markets and short haul markets through analyzing the data about the Vacation Overnight Visitor in the 2013 HKTB Visitor Profile Statistic. Then, distance decay will be explained to suggest the relationship with the cultural distance.  Distance decay is a geographical term which describes the effect of distance on cultural or spatial interactions. The distance decay effect states that the interaction between two locales declines as the distance between them increases. We select the United Kingdom, France, the USA, Canada and the Middle East as the long haul markets. In addition, we choose Singapore, Malaysia, Japan, Korea and India as the short haul markets, which are all from Asia. The aim of choosing these ten markets is to find the different visitors’ behaviors from different markets and discuss the implications of such behaviors on this destination.  Compared and analyzed the cultural factors to explain the cultural distance among 5 long haul markets and 5 short haul markets.

2. Main Body

2.1 Long Haul Market to Hong Kong.

Generally speaking, most of the long haul markets have similar visitor characteristics. A large part of visitors from long haul markets are middle-aged and have a stable job. Male takes up larger proportion of tourists than female. Meanwhile, a large number of people choose to travel with their family or friends and they do not select Hong Kong as a single destination. The second destinations of them are China Mainland and Macau Special Administration Region. For instance, visitors from long haul markets like traveling without tour guides. They often check the travel guide and design the tour route by themselves. (Analyze from Table 1and Chart 1)  

Table 1