The role of variety seeking in short and long run revisit intentions in holiday destinations

The main purpose of the present paper is to identify the differences in the antecedents of holiday destinations revisit intentions in the short and long run. Specifically, this work analyzes the influence of specific variety seeking, perceived value, destination image, satisfaction, switching costs and past switching behavior.

This is a quantitative study and the authors collected data personal interviews at households using the random route sampling technique. The sample comprises 400 tourists who have been on holiday at least once in the last two years, excluding lodging in relatives' and friends' houses or their own secondary residence. The data is analyzed through structural equation modeling.

The results show that there are relevant differences in the antecedents of holiday destination revisit intentions in the short and long term. The main determinants of the intention to return to the destination for the next holiday are past switching behavior, switching costs and specific variety seeking, whereas the assessment of the destination (image and satisfaction) does not have a significant effect. However, in the long term, satisfaction becomes the most relevant antecedent of intentions to return, specific variety seeking maintains its influence, and past switching behavior and switching costs become irrelevant.

The findings have relevant implications for destination managers in helping them to understand the temporal pattern of tourist revisit intentions and the main antecedents.

The main contribution of this paper is twofold. Firstly, researchers have rarely considered the temporal dimension when analyzing the antecedents of revisit intention, despite the usefulness of this approach to improve the understanding of tourists' return intentions. Secondly, the research is focused on specific variety seeking – that is, the propensity to seek variety in a concrete product category; rather than general variety seeking that is the usual approach.