Tourism Behaviour in Seoul: An Analysis of Tourism Activity Sequence using Multidimensional Sequence Alignments

The analysis of tourism behaviour as an outcome of individual decision making has recently been an emerging focus in tourism research. The conventional approach to the analysis of tourism behaviour typically associates a particular choice behaviour with some travel motivations or a priori selected socio-demographic characteristics. The results do not account for the underlying mechanism of the tourist's complex sequential decision making. This study aims to capture not only cross-sectional but also sequential and interdependent characteristics of tourism behaviour using a multidimensional sequence alignment method, which is applied to Japanese and English-speaking travellers’ activity data collected in Seoul, Korea. The suggested method shows great potential for improved explanation of tourist behaviour at the individual level by revealing the sequential relationships between tourism activities and the interdependency between simultaneous decisions on activity type, location and transport mode. The implications for tourism market segmentation are shown to be paramount.