An Empirical Study of the International-Tourism Management by a Model of Consumer Behaviour

The objective of this study is to analyse, empirically, the lengthier stay by foreigners and starting businesses by foreigners, using a model of consumer behaviour for a successful case of the management of international tourism. An important issue for tourism management common to many tourist sites is how the number of foreign tourists is increased. In particular, a multi-lateralization or stabilization of revenue can be attained by increasing not only the number of short-stay tourists, which does tend to be changed, but also the number of tourists who stay on a long-term basis. Furthermore, taking in not only tourist income but also business investment from overseas contributes to the local development of a tourist site. If many foreigners reside in the locality and begin businesses, in addition to just going shopping as tourists, it is thought to lead to an improvement in the local economy because of the direct investment from overseas. Moreover, when sources of knowledge or wisdom from overseas flow into a locality, it can even be expected that some transition or innovation in the society or economy, that was not previously considered, may happen. On the other hand, although it may be easy for a tourist site to increase the number of short-stay visitors temporarily by, for example, a particular event, cases which succeed in increasing the number of the lengthier stay or in starting businesses from overseas are scarce. In this study, we considered one of the ski resorts in Japan which has succeeded in rapidly increasing the number of the foreigners? lengthier stay and the promotion of foreigner?s starting businesses in recent years. The success factors were investigated by presenting a questionnaire to foreign tourists there. As for the design methodology of the research, environmental transitions, such as the recent Internet developments of social networks, were added to the consumer-behaviour process models of previous studies. The results show that the creation of a community controlled by the foreigners where there was reliance and empathy, and a network of tourism resources, are clear success factors. On the other hand, neither the expansion of a one-way advertising campaign nor improvements in transportation had a significant correlation. In conclusion, in order to expand the number of travellers and direct investment from overseas, the improvement of tourism resources by inter-regional associations and deregulation by the government, etc. are useful.