Guiding tourists to their ancestral homes

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to introduce measures of the motivation of tourists who travel to their ancestral homes. A set of learning exercises is presented for students and managers to apply understanding of these motives to tourism strategies.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper provides a brief review of the literature of heritage tourism and the special segment concerning travel with genealogical objectives. Survey data on motives to seek out ancestors are provided with learning exercises to link motives to tourism planning.

Findings

Data on the importance of multiple motives are presented with analytical measures of their overall importance levels and of differences between US and UK samples.

Research limitations/implications

The motivational variables and data collection are primarily exploratory, focusing on samples that are interested in genealogy and heritage tourism. Further research could certainly be expanded to cover broader populations of tourists and genealogists.

Practical implications

By combining primary research with trade association research included in the paper students and tourism managers have the opportunity to apply research findings to tourism and hospitality decision making to attract and satisfy tourists who have genealogical goals in their travel agendas.

Originality/value

Data based on the important and growing domain of motivational research in ancestral/genealogical‐related tourism have not been presented for analysis and application until now. Strength of motives and differences between nationalities of tourists present a unique analytical opportunity in learning exercises.

Citation

Ray, N.M. and McCain, G. (2009), "Guiding tourists to their ancestral homes", International Journal of Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research, Vol. 3 No. 4, pp. 296-305. https://doi.org/10.1108/17506180910994514