Experiencing events and tourism products and services

This report, commissioned by membership organisation Boundless, explores the nature of contemporary short break and special interest break experiences and motivations in the UK leisure market. The results and themes in the main body of this report represent the outcomes of statistical significance testing and represent the key areas in which strong, statistically significant relationships have been established. Key findings include: • Emotional responses to holiday experiences group into two key clusters – one labelled foot down, which is motivated by emotional intensity, and another labelled feet up which is motivated by comfort-seeking. • Women were significantly more likely than men to associate feelings with, and to have emotional responses to, their holidays – this is true in the case of excitement, love, surprise, joy, satisfaction, trust, and fulfilment. • Older consumers were more likely to report “comfort” related responses than “intensity” related, and there was also a clear tendency for older consumers to be less interested in special-interest activities. However, there was a clear resistance against this trend among consumers in their 50s. • Personality types group into two key clusters – activity-seekers and experienceseekers – and these categories relate to behaviour in terms of the diversity of trips taken, and influence the likelihood of interest in different kinds of special interest break. • There is significant latent demand among tourism consumers for personallymeaningful and more unusual special interest trips as evidenced in the gaps between those with experience of such trips and those indicating themselves likely to engage in the future.