The purpose of this study was to derive the visit motivations of wellness tourists and to derive strategies for the wellness tourism market through market segmentation based on visit motivations. First, this study derived seven motivators through a literature review with a discussion of experts: relaxation/healing/escape from everyday life, health improvement, novelty, luxury and prestige, self-examination/education, nature-friendly motivation, and social relations improvement. Then, in order to derive differentiated characteristics by motivation according to market segmentation, a difference analysis was conducted with the satisfaction, behavioral intention, and flow of wellness tourism participants. Data collection was carried out with the users of Chungcheongbuk-do wellness tourism products, and was supported by the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism (South Korea) from 2 September to 4 December 2021. Through the analysis in this study, it was first found that the wellness tourism motivations of wellness tourists were divided into a total of six factors (relaxation/healing/health improvement, novelty, luxury and prestige, self-examination/education, nature-friendly motivations, and social relation improvement). Then, as for market segmentation according to the visit motivations of wellness tourists, it was found that the markets were divided into “novelty-seeking type, comprehensive motivation-seeking type, neutral wellness-seeking type, and exploratory wellness-seeking type.” Finally, it was determined that there were significant differences in satisfaction, behavioral intention, and flow among those types of wellness tourist groups, and the average levels of satisfaction, behavioral intention, and flow were commonly lower in the neutral wellness-seeking type than in the comprehensive motivation-seeking type and the exploratory wellness-seeking type. This study derived the necessity to conceive differentiated strategies for the wellness tourism motivation group with the development of a wellness tourism motivation scale and a market segmentation study, and provided practical implications according to the characteristics of individual groups.

Taking note of the role played by local tourism governance as viewed from the tourist’s gaze, this study examined the effects of local tourism governance on the awareness of local tourism brand equity and local tourism attachment as perceived by tourists. This study also attempted to identify the role and importance of externally-expressed local tourism governance. In total, 439 samples were collected from tourists who had recently experienced local tourism in South Korea; these samples were analyzed using SPSS. The implications derived from the results of the analysis are as follows. First, regarding the effects that the operation of local tourism governance have on brand equity, it was identified that the factors of partnership and institutionalization had significant positive effects on both brand images and brand awareness, where the effect of partnership was the strongest, and where participation only had a significant positive effect on the brand images. Second, regarding the relationship between the operation of local tourism governance and brand equity, it was found that, from the viewpoint of tourists, the governance support system negatively affects brand equity. Lastly, as has been shown in previous studies, both brand images and brand awareness—which are two core sub-factors of local tourism-brand equity—had significant effects on local tourism attachment; of them, brand awareness played a stronger role in the formation of local tourism attachment. Future studies should examine the functional role of local tourism governance based on field investigations at multiple destinations, checking the actual effects of local tourism governance while focusing on the associations between the role of local tourism governance and actually measurable indicators, such as revitalization of the local industrial economy, increases in income, performance in terms of attracting tourists, and improved satisfaction with local tourism.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the competitive relationships among the four major Global Distribution Systems (GDSs), which are representative reservation systems in the tourism industry by using niche theory. To that end, niche theory, which presents the three core concepts of niche breadth, niche overlap, and niche superiority, was combined with gratification in the uses to apply the gratification niche analysis technique. Based on an extensive literature review, four factors (core functions, system functions, service functions, and additional functions) to measure user satisfaction levels by function with GDSs were extracted. Online/offline questionnaire surveys were conducted with travel agencies’ airline counter staffs who had experience using all four GDSs, and in total, 324 copies of the questionnaire were used in the analysis. The analysis results confirmed that Sabre had a competitive edge in general over the other three GDSs, while TOPAS (Amadeus) and Galileo had a comparative competitive edge in certain functions. This study suggested concrete implications that can help individual GDSs in terms of their development of functions or the establishment of marketing strategies by verifying user satisfaction by the function of individual GDSs.

This study aimed to derive tourism motives and constraint factors that have changed or are newly applicable after COVID-19, and to identify the influencing relationships between these factors and complex aspects of tourism behavior intentions. For this purpose, the Push-Pull-Mooring model was used. To achieve the purpose of this study, prior literature and empirical studies were used to derive the primary measurement items through the primarily derived PPM model-based factors, and an online questionnaire survey was conducted with consumers who had had experience of overseas travel within the past two years. In total, 322 copies of the questionnaire were used for analysis. Through factor analyses, five push factors, four pull factors, and four mooring factors were derived. To understand tourism behavior intentions, each of the travel resumption times, preferred destination types, and preferred accommodation types were divided into three to conduct multinomial logistic regression analysis. The influence relationships between variables were verified to identify the changes in tourism behavior intentions caused by COVID-19, and the results indicated that some items of the PPM factors had significant influencing relationships with travel resumption times and preferred accommodation types. The preferred destination types were found to have significant influencing relationships with some items of the push/pull factors that were not found to have any influencing relationships with the mooring factors. This study is meaningful in that it presented motives and constraint factors for tourism behaviors from a new perspective based on changes in the tourism environment due to COVID-19, and the application of the PPM model and travel behavior is expected to be applied to diverse tourist behavior studies hereafter to achieve theoretical extensions.