Tourist segmentation in an intangible heritage setting: the Holy Week processions in the city of Popayán, Colombia

Abstract

This research intends to establish a characterisation of the tourists who attend a representation that has been recognised as intangible cultural heritage by UNESCO, specifically, the Holy Week processions in the city of Popayán, Colombia. To achieve this goal, segmentation we conducted on the basis of two models that are widely used in the segmentation of tourists in World Heritage Sites: the McKercher model, based on cultural motivations, and Poria, Butler, and Airey’s model, based on the emotional perception of the visited heritage. Within this segmentation, there are four underlying types of visitors: incidental cultural, sightseeing cultural, serendipitous cultural and purposeful cultural tourists. The results show that there are three motivational dimensions among tourists who attend the Holy Week processions in the city of Popayán: hedonic, cultural, and convenience. The innovation of this research is, therefore, to reinforce the validation of types of tourists in the literature on Word Heritage Site destinations but, in this case, we apply it to an intangible cultural heritage resource in Latin America.