The need to adapt to travel expenditure patterns : a study comparing business and leisure tourists in Barcelona

An understanding of expenditure patterns is vital to travel organizers and destination marketers. Using surveys conducted by the Barcelona Tourism Board (Turisme de Barcelona), this study profiled the trip by purpose: leisure or business, and investigated the relationships between travel expenditure, length of stay, repeat visits and satisfaction. Different trip-related and socio-demographic variables, such as trip purpose, number of nights spent and repeat visits were found to contribute to explaining the expenditure variations. The theoretical model is based on the literature, and puts forward different hypotheses, which are tested using SEM. The findings show behavioural differences between those groups and are useful for tourism managers of urban destinations.