The Study of Motivation Factors of Tourists in Visiting Cox’s Bazar Sea Beach, Bangladesh

Abstract

This research was conducted to identify push and pull factors that motivate tourists to visit Cox’s Bazar. The 12 push motives and 12 pull motives were adopted from the literature review. The study was descriptive in nature and a self-administered questionnaire was the main tool to collect data from 400 domestic tourists at the destination. The study also compared and contrasted the push and pull motives between tourists who travelled on their own and those who travelled with tour groups. The result revealed that four push motivations found to be the most influential were (1) escape from the monotonous environment (2) physical rest and relax, (3) visit the dream destination and attractions, (4) enjoy the sea and the sea beach. Whereas pull motivations including (1) beautiful nature such as beach, sea, and forests, (2) active cultural and historical sites, (3) most famous beach destination in Bangladesh, and (4) good service quality were among the top four of these two groups of tourists. In a comparison, there was a slight difference in terms of push motivations between these two groups of tourists. One factor that stood out from this study was “explore the new destination”. This was on the top of the four among independent travelers while it was absent among the tourists who travelled in groups. This finding was similar to that of the previous studies which considered tourists who did not know their destinations relied more on travel agency to arrange their trips. On the other hand, those who self-organized theirs tended to explore the destinations more. For destination attributes, there was no significant difference between two groups due to the fact that they were both local tourists who were quite familiar with the destination.