A Hybrid Approach to Tourism: The Case Study of Fethiye, Turkey
Abstract
Understanding the consumer, which forms the basis of marketing, and the consumer behavior is a subject that has been carefully followed and interested by the relevant field researchers. It is observed that significant changes have occurred in the expectations and demands of the general society, especially in Generation Z (who was born in the year 2000 and later), which is known to have a say in the economic markets due to the purchasing power in a close future. Within the context of these changes, a notion that is frequently mentioned in the recent marketing literature has begun to emerge: Hybrid Consumer. This new consumer type has some main characteristics, such as it cannot be correlated with the consumer segmentation criteria of traditional marketing, its behaviour cannot be predicted depending on its previous consuption, its motivation for consumption is variable and it has the willingness to pay at a very wide price range. The main purpose of this study is to carry out the definition of hybrid tourist by bringing the concept of hybrid consumer to tourism literature and to explain the characteristics of the touristic destinations which have hybrid characteristics through the example of Fethiye, Turkey. It is believed that both the travel motivations and the travel expenditure ranges of hybrid tourists change constantly. Such that the same tourist may want to experience many different types of tourism (sea-sand-sun, adventure, nature, culture, faith, etc.) during his/her travel to a destination. Therefore, it becomes a necessity to highlight destination specialities for hybrid tourists.
Copyright (c) 2019 Ipek Itır Can, Asim Saldamli

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