Cultural Tourism Motivation – The Case Of Romanian Youths

Cultural attractions have become particularly important and play an important role in tourism at all levels. They are also increasingly being placed at the centre of urban and rural development and constitute an important aspect of social and cultural lives of the residents. Cultural tourism is defined as ‘visits by persons from outside the host community motivated wholly or in part by interest in the historical, artistic, scientific or lifestyle/heritage offerings of a community, region, group or institution. The main purpose of this research is to identify and understand the general dimensions of motivation for attending cultural tourism. Cultural tourism is motivated by tourists’ interest in historical, artistic, scientific or heritage offering by a community, region, group or institution. It can be considered an independent segment of the tourism industry as well as a complement to mainstream tourism, in connection with other forms of attraction. In this sense, local communities and national organizations all over the world have developed particular cultural and heritage tourism products that attract increase the number of tourist visits each year. The study examine the motivations of Romanian young people in attending cultural tourism for underling the perspectives of cultural tourism development in Romania. We developed a quantitative study and designed a structured questionnaire to obtain information regarding youths’ motivations and perceptions toward attending cultural tourism, including their demographic characteristics. Based on significant literature review we included 7 composite motives: learning reasons, cultural motives, experience something new, pleasure-seeking and entertainment, physical reasons, relaxation-based motives and indirect motives. The findings of this research provide a comprehensive view of cultural tourism behavior in Romania. The evidence suggests that for the young and highly educated generation the most important reasons which attract them to cultural tourism activities are the novelty and learning experience. These distinct characteristics of young people’s motivation and their behavior toward cultural tourism have a number of both practical implications for the cultural tourism organizers and theoretical contribution to the growing research of cultural tourism.