What Motivates Cultural Tourists? An Analysis Of Bucharest Inhabitants’ Motivation To Visit The Centre Region

Cultural tourism is currently one of the main driving forces of the tourist phenomena, accounting for a significant part of the world’s tourist flows. Cultural tourism may take many forms, according to the motivation behind tourists’ impetus to travel to a certain destination. Cultural heritage and historical sites, dance, music and theatre performances, art galleries, museums and exhibitions, religious and worship sites and ethnic traditions are the main attractions for tourists motivated by knowledge seeking, self-development and the desire to experience other cultures. Although cultural motivations play an important role in the generation of tourist flows towards cultural tourism destinations, a tourism experience is rarely generated as a result of a single motivation. The act of choosing a specific destination and tourism product is influenced by multiple motivations, not only cultural but also connected to relaxation or family. Furthermore, tourism products are rarely homogeneous – a single holiday may include experiences with cultural content as well as leisure time, sports, adventure or entertainment. Thus, culture is not always the main motivation behind cultural tourism and may in fact be less central to the decision to travel than other factors. This is particularly true in the case of destinations which dispose of various cultural assets, but whose natural tourist resources – such as landscape, climate, access to the sea – also makes them attractive for other types of tourism. The aim of this article is to show that in the case of tourist destinations where cultural attractions represent the vast majority of the areas’ tourist heritage, cultural motivations remains central to the decision to travel. Furthermore, we will seek to identify the main types of cultural attractions that motivate cultural tourism in Romania by investigating Bucharest inhabitants’ perception of the Centre Region, a cultural destination par excellence in light of the latest statistics and developments. The article is based on the findings of an exploratory survey-based research carried out in the first three months of 2013 on more than two hundred tourists and potential tourists in Bucharest.