Benchmarking holiday experience: the case of senior tourists

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to determine and benchmark the senior tourists’ preferences by considering the importance attached by them and their perception with respect to internal tourism attributes (i.e. package tour characteristics) and external tourism attributes (i.e. destination features). Design/methodology/approach: The present study makes use of importance-performance analysis and employs paired sample t-test for this purpose. Findings: The senior tourists evaluated the package tour attributes to be more important and better than destination characteristics. They also perceived that the service providers have to pay immediate attention to improve the quality of restaurants and meals and hotels. Research limitations/implications: Data are collected only from inbound senior tourists in Poland. In future, research may be conducted with a more representative sample. Practical implications: The senior tourists want to explore the local cuisine and then have food choices from their culture as well. “Tour escort” is one of the most essential characteristic of a package tour and it could serve as a factor of differentiation. Hence, the tourist service providers have to pay attention to these factors. Originality/value: The paper takes into account the internal tour attributes and destination attributes to evaluate senior tourists’ holiday experience