In western countries, the values of conservation,
health, and nature are spilling over to travel and
tourism in a major way. The European Travel Data
Center shows that European travelers want nature
to be prominent in their vacations (Poon, 1994). Take
German tourists as an example. It is found that nearly
60 % of them said that the experience of nature was
the most important reason for their main holiday trip
in 1990 (Swarbrooke and Horner, 1999).
Given this fact, it is found that many tourismreliant
countries have developed various tourism
products such as spas, natural-based resorts, and ecotourism
destinations in order to supply the changing
tourism demands. In this case, Thailand can be taken
as an example. It is found that as a result of a current
tourism trend in health-concerned tourism, Thailand
has developed many spas and health-based tourism
sites to supply the tourists’ demands (Circle of Asia,
2003). This shows an important role of tourist
consumer behavior in developing tourism products.
It is possible to say here that understanding tourist
consumer behavior is very beneficial for developing
tourism products in order to supply the tourism
demand.