Soft amenity attribute preferences of resort vacationers

The purpose of this investigation was to identify the key 'soft amenity' attributes resort vacationers perceived as benificial to meeting their vacation goals. A second purpose was to examine whether vacation soft amenity attribute preferences differed significantly across segments comprised of resort vacationers homogeneously grouped on the basis of gender, age, employment, place of residence and vacation goal. An open-ended questionnaire format generated over 4,300 soft amenity attributes which were subsequently grouped into eight categories. The most frequently cited attributes coincide with the results of most previous research on vacation behaviour. Chi-square analyses were performed to determine the influence that the independent variables had on resort vacationers' soft amenity attribute preferences. Region of vacationer residence exerted more influence over the preference of attributes than any other variable tested. Eleven of the 25 most frequently cited soft amenity attributes were significantly...