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Travel is more popular than ever, so why should destination managers worry? Because their location's attractiveness may be spinning away even as they watch.
On October 10, 1972, I gave a speech to the Southern California chapter of the Travel Research Association (now the Travel & Tourism Research Association) that examined the underlying causes for why destinations rise and fall in popularity. Based on a psychographic system that we had developed at my first market-research company (BAsico), the speech pointed out that destinations appeal to specific types of people and typically follow a relatively predictable pattern of growth and decline in popularity over time. The reasons lie in the fact that the character of most destinations changes as a result of growth and development of tourist-oriented facilities. As destinations change, they lose the audience or market segments that made them popular and appeal instead to an evershrinking group of travelers.
Although I had used the concept in our work with travel clients, this was the first public presentation of the ideas to a broad audience. Considering the limited nature of the venue, the response was surprising. Requests for copies of the speech came from around the United States and from countries in Europe and Asia. Apparently someone forwarded the speech to the editors of Cornell Quarterly, because it appeared as an article in 1974.1
Since that time I have further refined the concept and the questions that make up the psychographic scale used to differentiate traveler types. In the second market-research company I founded (Plog Research, Inc., now NFO/Plog Research and a subsidiary of Interpublic Group/IPG), we have probably included the scale in more than 200 studies and consulting assignments, and have reported on it in journals and speeches at conferences.2 Thus, a large experience base supports those early observations about destination development and life-cycle stages. In addition, academic researchers have explored the scale's conceptual base.3
Feature articles on the travel habits of the different travel personalities have appeared in popular magazines (e.g., Condo Nast Traveler, Endless Vacation, Car & Travel, AAA World, Mature Outlook). Various college tourism texts review the concept, and I have explained it further in two travel books I wrote.4
How destinations grow and decline has been part of...