The attractiveness of Portugal as a tourist destination, by mature domestic travellers

This paper aims to ascertain the attractiveness of a tourist destination for mature domestic travellers, analyse the relation between this attractiveness and their socio–demographic characteristics and identify groups in line with the perceived attractiveness. A theoretical framework is proposed based on an attractiveness–based theory perspective which integrates attributes and products of attraction as relevant external forces which attract tourists to a destination. The results show that there are six different groups, five of which have a positive view of the destination's attractiveness, and one group with a negative view. Furthermore, a direct relation was found between the attractiveness of the tourist destination and some of the socio–demographic characteristics of the surveyed subjects.

Keywords: destination attractiveness, tourist destinations, mature travellers, domestic travellers, Portugal, tourism