Heterogeneity of demand for tourist accommodation services in the state of Mérida, Venezuela: a latent class analysis

This paper uses latent class analysis to study the heterogeneity of demand for tourist accommodation services in the State of Merida and rank users according to common characteristics in each group. According to the results, the demand for such services is very heterogeneous and users may be grouped into four classes or segments along with various features, such as visiting purpose, age, monthly-income level, gender, group size, length of stay, category and location of the selected accommodation, tourism season, quality levels of the service, and satisfaction and return intention. Recognizing these groups is a crucial requirement for the design of marketing strategies that allow to increasing tourism demand in Merida State.