旅游英语课文

Lesson three------travelers

An understanding of the consumer is at the core of successful business practice in the tourist industry. If the various facets of the tourism, travel, and hospitality world can meet the needs of the consumer, some chance of business is possible provided that other financial and managerial inputs are appropriate. thus if a theme park can meet the needs of its customers, if a wilderness lodge can provide the kind of accommodation its users expect, and if an adventure tour operator can organize an exciting white-water rafting trip ,there is the basis for a successful tourism business. When consumer expectations are met or exceeded by tourism operations, one can expect repeat business and positive word-of-mouth advertising, as well as the ability to maintain or even increase the current lever of charging for the existing tourism service. Clearly, consumers matter to tourism business.

The general issue of understanding consumer needs falls within the area of the psychology of tourists’behavior. This study area is concerned with what motivates tourists, how they make decisions, what tourists think of the products they buy, how much they enjoy and learn during their holiday experiences, how they interact with the local people and environment, and how satisfied they are with their holidays.

A major focus of consumer studies in the psychology of tourist behavior is the study of travel motivation. The question is often expressed simply as“why do tourists travel?” There are three main sources of ideas that assist in answering the above question concerning travel motivation. Historical and literary accounts of travel and travelers provide one such source. Additionally, the discipline of psychology and its long history to understand and explain human behavior is a rich vein of writing for travel motivation. Finally, the current practices of tourism industry researchers, particularly those involved in surveying visitors, offer some additional insights concerning how we might approach travel motivation.

Historians provide a range of accounts concerning why travelers have set about their journeys over the centuries. The wealthier members of Athenian and Roman society owned summer resorts and used to holiday there to avoid the heat of the cities and to indulge in a social life characterized by much eating and drinking. The stability of the Roman world permitted its citizens to interest themselves in some long-distance travel, and visiting the Egyptian monuments and collecting souvenirs from these sites was a well-accepted and socially prestigious practice. If motives such as escape, social interaction, and social comparison were popular in Roman times, the emergence of the pilgrimage in the Middle Ages can be seen as adding a serious travel motive to our historical perspective. The original pilgrimages were essentially journeys to sacred places undertaken because of religious motives. Travelers sought assistance or bounty of their God and journeyed long distances to revere the deity. The legacy of the pilgrimage modern traveler motivation is not