ROLES TOURISTS PLAY

The purpose of this article is to describe the process by which tourist roles are conceptualized, and measured, using three-dimensional scaling analysis. The findings indicate the existence of at least 13 leisure-based tourist roles that include the drifter, the escapist, and the independent mass tourist, among others. A three-dimensional solution suggests that people enact preferred tourist roles in destinations which provide an optimal balance of familiarity-strangeness, stimulation-tranquility, and structure-independence. A theoretical perspective is developed that addresses the possible relationship among tourist roles, psychological needs, and optimal destination characteristics.