The Motivation dichotomy : Why do people go on holiday?
In a very comprehensive assessment of tourism motivation, Mountinho (1987 : 16) defined motivation as a ‘state of need, a condition that exerts a push of individual towards certain types of action that are seen as likely to bring satisfaction’. Thus demand is about using tourism as a form of consumption to achieve a level of satisfaction for an individual, and involves understanding their behavior and actions and what shapes these human characteristics. It is important to know what the tourist desires, needs and looks for from the process of consuming a tourism experience that involves an investment of time and money. The expectations a tourist has as a consumer in purchasing and consuming a tourism product or experience are ultimately shaped by a wide range of social and economic factors dependent upon the individual’s attitudes and perception of tourism.
Yet tourist motivation is a complex area dominated by the social psychologists, with their concern for the behaviors, attitudes and thoughts of people as consumer of tourism. A very influential motivational study public in 1993 by Phillip Pearce suggested that in any attempt to understand tourist motivation we must consider hoe to develop a concept of motivation in tourism, hoe to communicate this to students and researchers who do not understand social psychology, and what practical measures need to be developed to measure people’s motivation for travel – particularly the existence of multi-motivation situations (i.e. more than one factor influencing the desire to engage in tourism). Pearce (1993) also discussed the need to distinguish between intrinsic and extrinsic forces shaping the motivation to become a tourist.