The impact of the COVID-19 health crisis on tourist evaluation and behavioural intentions in Spain: implications for market segmentation analysis

Abstract

This research aims to examine consumers’ evaluation and expected behaviour changes that may arise in the wake of COVID-19 and to develop a market segmentation. Rooted in the prospect theory, after reviewing health crises, data were collected from a Spanish sample (n = 1,000) relating to changes in consumers’ evaluations of tourism products due to COVID-19 and their subsequent behavioural intentions. Findings indicate that conventional tourism may be undergoing a downturn as component of the leisure basket. Beyond a heterogeneous repercussion on tourism types and products, changes in relevance of purchase stages together with a reorganization of consumer planning are expected, with more local and individual holidays, more convenient dates, less use of vendors, more insurance contracting, and lower use of public transport and shared services. Moreover, the study provides evidence of the need of linking health risk and tourist behaviour as another behavioural segmentation base, identifying three different response behaviours. Finally, we outline improvements to hospitality and tourism management to face up to this situation.