Tourists’ Motivation toward Visiting a World Heritage Site: The Case of Guimarães

Resumo

Within the major role, the tourism industry is taking in sustaining and enhancing growth in economies all around the world, the cultural segment deserves a particular look as, in most cases, it is playing a leading role. This has to do with the idea of tourists’ visits as a memorable happening and an authentic experience and relates to the psychological dimension of tourist demand. This study investigated the motivation behind the choice of a cultural/heritage destination, and particularly a World Heritage Site (WHS). Taking the case of Guimarães, the study inquired on the tourists’ motivations and perceived attributes of the city to conclude on the level of satisfaction tourists get from their visits and the destination attributes. The methodology used in this research had a quantitative nature, based on a self-administered survey applied to 325 tourists who visited Guimarães during 2015. In that analytical approach, tourists were organised according to their main visit motivation, i.e., if they were mainly motivated by visiting a World Heritage Site or by other reasons. An interesting result was that despite WHS visitors reporting higher satisfaction levels, the other type of visitors want to return in greater numbers. The study concluded that the destination is performing well, but is suffering from not having a consolidated image in the market. Looking at these and other results obtained, several recommendations were made to increase tourists’ satisfaction vis-à-vis the destination, by mainly addressing the strategy to be used in advertising the set of products and services it can provide to visitors.