Social Psychology of Tourist Behavior
In Stanley Plog’s article titled “Why Destinations Rise and Fall in Popularity” in 1974 he placed the tourist behaviours along a continuum. He placed adventurous tourists whom he called “psychocentrics” on the other.
- Allocentrics- adventurous and prefer travel alone in a small groups to new destinations.
- Psychocentrics- find comfort in things familiar to them even when travelling
- Mid-centrics- those in-between the allocentrics and psychocentric.
Psychocentrics prefer packaged tours while allocentrics plan their own trips.
There are tourists who prefer all-in package tours while others prefer to book air tickets, tours, and hotel accommodations separately through the Internet. There are tourists who prefer to go to places “where everybody goes,” while some prefer “off the beaten paths.” It is therefore important for tourism workers to know the kind of tourists they are serving each day in order to address the needs of the latter better.
According to Mancini (2001), while some tourists prefer do-it yourself (DIY), other tourists avail of packaged tours because it frees them from making too many decisions along the way as they delegate some decision-making duties to the travel agent. In effect, this saves the tourist time and money by keeping them from making bad choices due to ignorance.
If we translate Plog’s model into life cycle of a destination, we will see that those attracting allocentrics will be destinations that are not well known to tourists yet and may not have enough tourist facilities. Plog’s model is well cited in many tourism materials. However, its critiques note that the theory is based on North American tourists and may not apply to tourists from other regions. People can ne allocentric or psychocentric depending on the situation (Livtin, 2006). Hence, even when general descriptions of tourists may be helpful in structuring a tourism worker’s preparations, it is still better to personalize tourism services to fit the client’s profile when possible.