Where nature meets luxury – a quantitative study of motives for glamping: A case study of German tourists

Abstract

Glamping tourism, a symbiosis of camping and luxury has experienced great increase in recent years. This master's thesis deals with the phenomenon of glamping and specializes in the motives of Germans to go glamping. Since there is little research data on glamping compared to other areas of tourism research, this thesis relies on camping and luxury tourism as the basis of glamping.

This study therefore examines glamping motives by drawing on camping and luxury travel motives from the literature. The sample was semi-randomly assembled via a web link. The realized sample consists of 266 women (70.7%) and men (29.3%) living in Germany and over 18 years of age. The results indicate that there are significant differences between the motives of the sexes (female/male), between the place of residence (urban/rural) and the age (young/old) of the respondents. For female participants espe-cially the motives Bonding, Public Display and Self-esteem are more important than for men. Participants from the city rate status as a stronger glamping motive than participants from the village. For older participants Public Display is a less strong glamping motive than for younger ones - but Learning is indicated as a stronger motive of the older ones. This master's thesis is of interest to tourism researchers as well as managers of campgrounds and destination managers, as it both narrows the research gap and provides practical implications for strategy development of destinations and campgrounds.