Repeat Visitors to Australian Caravan Parks

Abstract

For some Australians, summer holidays at caravan parks have been a long held family tradition. Every summer during the Christmas school break, families return to the same caravan park for their annual holiday. Most have an on-going reservation that specifies both the visitation dates and the site location within the caravan park. In some cases, this holiday pattern has been repeated for several generations - at the same caravan park, at the same time of year, and on the same campsite. This thesis explores the nature and significance of repeat visitation using Australian caravan parks as the platform from which to observe the phenomenon. Repeat visitors have been defined as any visitor who has visited a destination more than once. Thus a person, who has visited a destination in childhood and returned 30 years later in adulthood, is considered a repeat visitor. So too, are those who return to the same destination year after year. Previously visited destinations offer a certain degree of familiarity and, perhaps reduce the risk of having an unsatisfactory holiday experience. However, this research has found that more complex factors influence the repeat caravanners decision to return to the same caravan park each year for the Christmas holidays. Individuals develop emotional attachments to places. Therefore, rather than being perceived as physical or geographic space, places are locales to which personal meaning is ascribed. Similarly, people interact with other people in that place. Therefore, they develop affective bonds to the community as well as to the place. Known as place attachment and community attachment, these theories are premised on the concept that the interaction of human kind and place should be perceived in terms of emotions. Regular visitors to caravan parks display place and community attachment and where the visitation pattern has occurred over several generations, these emotional attachments are primarily to the immediate family or the neo-tribe. The annual holiday provides an opportunity for the family to gather together as a cohesive group and, for the individual tribal members to reaffirm their identity within the family group. The purpose of this thesis was to understand the phenomenon of repeat visitation by investigating the relationship between place attachment, community attachment and tribal membership with frequency of visitation. More specifically, by examining repeat visitors to Australian caravan parks, this thesis aimed to differentiate repeat visitors into heterogenous groups. Using a mixed methodology approach, a combination of quantitative and qualitative research techniques were used to target three separate populations, namely caravan park managers, repeat caravanners and intergenerational repeat caravanners. Three research phases were undertaken to examine these populations. The results of phase one of this research identified that repeat visitation to caravan parks during the Christmas holiday period was considerable. While acknowledging that there were some negative impacts of repeat visitation, caravan park managers generally perceived that repeat visitation was positive for their business. Phase two results showed that repeat visitors could be distinguished into low, medium and high frequency of visitation groups. As frequency of visitation increased the level of place and community also increased. The final research phase examined intergenerational repeat visitors and found that while place and community were important, the overriding attachment was to the tribe. This research has both practical and theoretical implications. Managers of caravan parks can benefit from understanding the factors that influence their repeat visitor clientele and better prepare them for the challenge of balancing the needs of all their customers. Repeat visitors are not uniform across visitation patterns of attachments to place and community. The tribalism findings encourage further exploration of this construct within tourism research. Several directions for future research were suggested.