Segmenting Tourists by their Travel Pattern for Insights into Achieving Energy Efficiency

Abstract

Tourists compose their trip of different travel choices across the transport, accommodation, and attractions/activities subsectors. Since these travel choices are characterized by different energy intensities, the energy use of a tourist trip as the combination of all travel choices varies for different tourists. To enable better management of energy use of tourism, the authors factor-cluster analyzed a set of travel choices of international tourists to New Zealand and aggregated tourists into types with similar travel patterns and energy consumption. Seven distinct clusters were obtained: a coach tourist, soft comfort traveler, auto tourist, camper, backpacker, tramper (hiker), and tourists who visit friends and relatives. These types were different both with regard to their total energy use and energy use per day within New Zealand. The understanding of different tourist types provides a basis for future energy conservation and efficiency strategies, which are briefly discussed.