Ski – resort and regional development: profile of visitors ... - E-Journal

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Filio Lazana, Diana Draganescu, Georgiana Grama, Magdalina Yarichkova
Travel decisions potentially involve all the forms of risk, as identified by Dowling and Staelin
(1994), namely functional risk (actual performance), social risk (embarrassment), physical
risk (risk to self), psychological risk (bruised ego) and time risk (wasted).
Early work within travel literature by Cohen (1972) identified four types of tourists based on
their relative preferences for either familiarity or novelty of a travel destination. Most broadly,
one group preferred destinations and circumstances to which they felt familiar (‘organised
mass tourist’). Another group preferred novelty, where the circumstances were unfamiliar.
The group seeking novelty would have a lower perception of risk and in turn appreciate and
find desirable “an acceptable level of risk”.
Roehl and Fesenmaiser (1992) suggest another perspective, which classified tourists into three
groups based on their perception of risk. These were risk neutral, those who did not consider
tourism or destination choice to involve risk; ‘functional risk’, those who considered the
possibility of operational or organizational failure as the primary source of potential risk;
those who were risk aware if not anticipatory. According to Sonmez et al., (1999), essential
for the recovery of a destination in the eyes of consumers is some demonstrable success in
terms of the actual level of safety and security at the destination. As Francesco Frangialli, the
secretary general of the WTO, declared, ‘we have learned from experience that the tourism
industry recovers very quickly from adversity’ (Quinn, 2003). Evidence has been brought to
show that, at times of global or regional heightened awareness of risk, where the actual country
or region does not experience any such risks, the recovery is quite swift.
Various studies have found that, in addition to the differences in recovery times in terms of
location relative to the specifically afflicted destinations, the impact of terrorism can be delayed
from between three and nine months after the event took place (Enders and Sandler, 1991;
Sonmez et al., 1994). The delay in impact has been variously attributed to the consumer
perception that there is a low probability of an immediate repeat of the incident or that postincident
media coverage heightens consumer awareness of the locale (Enders et al., 1992).
Furthermore, it stands under discussion the proposition that factual information for centrally
processed attitude formulators should be targeted to males rather than females as males are
less risk aversive (Hall, 1996; Gibson and Jordan, 1998; Carr, 2001). A study by Elsrud (2001)
found an actual positive perception of risk by males. However, another study by Sonmez and
Graefe (1998) found that gender was not an influence on risk perception. In addition to gender,
there is some evidence that the post-terrorist marketing should be more targeted to younger
rather than old consumers. A study by Gibson and Yiannakis (2002) of the tourist role
preference over the life course found that preference for risk-related tourism tended to decrease
with age.
In his paper entitled “Tourism Security, Different Places/Different Faces”, Dr. Tarlow (2006),
mentions some of the principle locations at high risk from terrorism such as transportation
hubs, hotels and conventions, cruises, restaurants, shopping centers, amusement parks, festivals
Tourism Today - Fall 2007 - Full Paper