Tourist Behaviour and Repeat  Visitation to Hong Kong

This article contributes to the growing literature on repeat visitation by investigating the ­relationship between tourism behaviour and repeat visitation. The data concern a sample of vacation visitors from Mainland China to Hong Kong in 1999. The study reveals that repeat visitors stay longer, take fewer activities and are involved more in local life-related activities. Furthermore, such repeat visitors spend larger sums on shopping, meals, hotel bills, local transport, etc. Results of the multivariate analysis show that, while the socio-economic ­characteristics of visitors are mostly insignificant, the number of visits is a significant variable positively contributing to the total spending and the spending on shopping, local transportation, meals outside of the hotel and hotel. In other words, repeat visitors are more beneficial economically to a destination than first-time visitors. The findings of this paper enrich the ­current literature about repeat visitation by demonstrating that repeat visitors and first-time visitors have significantly different tourist behaviour in terms of spending and length of stay, etc. The implication is that these two groups of visitors should be treated as two distinct ­market segments for developing marketing strategies and tourism programmes.