A RESEARCH ON TRAVEL MOTIVATION OF BACKPACKERS VISITING ISTANBUL

İSTANBUL’A GELEN SIRTÇANTALI TURİSTLERİN SEYAHAT MOTİVASYONLARI ÜZERİNE BİR ARAŞTIRMA

Abstract

Backpackers can be defined in different ways. For example, Murphy and Pearce (1995) define backpacker as a person who wants to meet different people during his/her trip, prefers budget accommodation and stay overnight for extended period than an ordinary tourist, has independently organized flexible travel program and enjoys participating voluntary tourism activities during the trip. On the other hand according to Murphy (2001) backpackers are mostly young travelers, having extended trips/vacations and sometimes working during their trips. In addition Sorensen (2003) describes backpackers as travelers who take multi-destination trips, organize their trips on their own, have flexible trip schedule and stay overnight for long periods. Existing literature shows that Turkey is one of the most preferred travel destinations by backpackers. In Richards and Wilson’s (2004) study, Turkey is listed as the sixth most visited destination in young and student travel market. Despite Turkey’s being favorable travel destination for backpackers; there has been no study about backpackers visiting Turkey. That situation shows that there is a huge loss of knowledge in the tourism businesses operating in backpacker market. In order to understand the consumer behavior more deeply, the reasons which direct a consumer to buy a particular product or service should be examined. Motivation is one of the major forces underlying the consumer behavior. Thus it can be said that the more we understand motivation; the more we understand consumer’s buying process. Understanding the reasons directing a traveler to have a backpacker style travel experience is very important with regard to predict the future of the backpacker market. Defining the reasons directing a traveler to have a particular travel experience brings a number of advantages both for tourism business operating in this market and public authorities who are responsible for developing tourism policies for backpacker market. Çakıcı (2000) points out that travelers with motivations look for different attributes from tourism businesses and their expectancies differ greatly as well. Also, knowing travel motivations helps tourism business owners and destination managers to identify which destination attributes should be featured in destination promotion campaigns (Kozak 2002). It is understood from the Ateljevic and Doorne’s (2004) literature review on backpacker tourism, travel motivation of backpackers is one of the basic research topics among scholars studying backpacker tourism. In our study we have identified ten published work about travel motivation of backpackers. These works belong to Murphy (1996), Mohsin and Ryan (2003), Newland (2004), Richards and Wilson (2004), Maoz (2007), Pearce and Foster (2007) Niggel and Benson (2008), Paris and Teye (2008), Paris and Teye (2010) and Godfrey (2011). If the current literature is evaluated in general, it is possible to say that most of the research was conducted on backpackers visiting Australia and New Zealand, survey method was employed but observation and deep interview as well. In the survey type studies in which motivation of backpackers was examined, the measurement instrument of motivation varies between 10 and 26 item with Likert type scales. Owing to not being an empirical research on backpackers visiting Istanbul or Turkey, aim of this research was set to examine the profile and travel motivation of backpackers visiting Istanbul. It is clear that findings of empirical studies on backpackers visiting Istanbul will provide some useful and important information for both tourism businesses and public authorities. Also it is possible; findings of this research will contribute to national tourism literature. In this research data was collected through a coherent questionnaire with existing literature. The questionnaire was comprised of two parts; in the first part there were questions about demographic and tripographic characteristics of backpackers visiting Istanbul. Second part of questionnaire contained a 28 items 5 point Likert type scale rated from 1: Not at all important to 5: Very Important. 26 items in the scale were derived from study of Paris and Teye (2010), and 2 items related with rites of passage, were derived from Gofrey’s (2011) study. Backpackers visited Istanbul during March and April 2012 comprised the population of research. There were number of reasons why Istanbul was selected for data collection. These reasons may be listed as; high number of hostels operating in the city (62 hostels), extra promotional impact of city’s selection for culture capital of Europe for the year 2010 and easy access to the city from European countries. Depending on these it is possible to say that a research on backpackers visiting Istanbul can tell us much about the profile and motivation of backpackers visiting Turkey. Due to the lack of empirical studies and unavailability of statistics about backpackers visiting Istanbul or Turkey, quota sampling -a non-probability sampling technique- was preferred. Gender and age were set as quota variables. As mentioned before due to the lack of information about backpackers visiting Turkey, quota rates of gender and age were calculated with regard to the existing literature. As age variable; less than 30 years old was set 70 percent quota, as gender; 55 percent female, 45 percent male rate was set as quota. A pre-test was implemented on a group of respondents consist of 44 backpackers between 1th-7th March 2012. Some revisions were done on the questionnaire according to the pre-test results. Main implication of survey was held in April 2012. By the end of April 2012, 887 useable questionnaires were obtained from backpackers visiting Istanbul. Data was analyzed through descriptive statistics, factor analysis, independent sample t-test and one way analysis of variance (ANOVA). Findings of the research indicate that nearly 57 percent of respondents are female while 43 perce

Özet

Sırtçantalı turistler dünya turizm endüstrisi içinde önemli bir pazar dilimi haline gelmiştir. İstanbul’a gelen sırtçantalı turistlerin seyahat motivasyonlarını belirlemek üzere bir araştırma yapılmıştır. Alanyazına dayalı geliştirilen anket, İstanbul’a 2012 yılı Mart- Nisan aylarında gelen sırtçantalılara internet ortamında ve yüz yüze uygulanmıştır. Cinsiyet ve yaşa göre kota örneklemesinin yapıldığı anket uygulamasında, kullanılabilir 887 ankete ulaşılmıştır. İstanbul’a gelen sırtçantalıların yarıdan fazlasının kadın, büyük çoğunluğunun bekâr olduğu ve göreceli olarak en fazla sırtçantalı turistin Almanya, Avustralya, Fransa, Amerika ve Yeni Zelanda’dan geldiği tespit edilmiştir. Yapılan alan araştırması, İstanbul’a gelen sırtçantalı turistlerin seyahat motivasyonlarının, dünyayı tanıma, deneyim arayışı, sosyalleşme, yaşam geçiş dönemleri, sakinlik arayışı, sırtçantalı kimliği ve yetenek gösterme başlıklarında incelenebileceğini göstermektedir. Sırtçantalı turistlerin seyahat motivasyonlarının yaş, cinsiyet, milliyet ve kendilerini tanımlarına göre anlamlı farklılık gösterdiği anlaşılmaktadır. Çalışma, bu pazara yönelik faaliyet gösteren turizm işletmeleri ve kamu otoritelerine dönük öneriler ile son bulmaktadır.