Spiritual attitudes and visitor motivations at the Beltane Fire Festival, Edinburgh

Catherine M. Matheson, Russell Rimmer and Ross Tinsley

Tourism Management, 2014, vol. 44, issue C, 16-33

Abstract: Outside the peak season for tourism to Edinburgh, Scotland, during the evening of April 30th, visitors attend a festival with ancient Celtic overtones. Frequently, the evening is cold and windy. Our objectives are to: identify motivations for attending the festival; trial questionnaire items on spiritual attitude; and assess whether spirituality might be relevant in assessing visitor intentions. The method of investigation involved exploration and confirmation phases to test structures in distinct subsamples. Further, a strict approach was applied to identify factors that had theoretical value. Spirituality attitude is found to be a factor, as well as the motivations of cultural adventure and escape. Given the nature of the event, the time of year and composition of the audience, encouraging repeat visitation and using this to develop and manage Edinburgh's tourism strategy has potential. Recommendations are made to management.

Keywords: Motivation; Spiritual attitude; Unconventional festival; Tourism development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0261517714000247

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:touman:v:44:y:2014:i:c:p:16-33

DOI: 10.1016/j.tourman.2014.01.023

Access Statistics for this article

Tourism Management is currently edited by Chris Ryan

More articles in Tourism Management from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().