Thermal tourism perception of young people: Case of Pamukkale University

Abstract

Thermal tourism is one of the most important tourism areas in terms of the resources of our country. It is important to understand how this area of tourism is seen in terms of target audiences or to understand whether any audience can be the target audience of this type of tourism in marketing, in order to be adequately evaluated and attracted attention in domestic and foreign tourism markets. The aim of this study is to reveal the metaphors they use for thermal tourism which is generally assumed to be preferred by individuals over a certain age, to determine how thermal tourism is perceived by the younger generation. For this purpose, Pamukkale University was designated as the universe and the research was carried out with the participation of university students. Phenomenology research design which is one of the qualitative research designs was used in the study. Participants were asked to fill the gaps in structured expressions of thermal tourism with expressions containing their subjective judgments. As a result of the research, theme, category and sub-categories were created from the metaphors that participants expressed about ”Thermal holiday concept”, “Importance of thermal holiday ”and“ Thermal holiday preferences ”.