Evaluating the ancestral tourism market

Ancestral tourism, or the exploration of one's roots, is an area of special interest which has recently gained more attention within the tourism industry. There is currently little literature that discusses the added value of ancestral tourism or outlines a scale for ancestral tourist motivations. An initial stage was conducted to explore the literature and interview 32 curators, archivists and volunteers responsible for the delivery of the ancestral tourism experience in Scotland. A second stage was a questionnaire collected to refine a scale developed from the first stage, and resulted in 157 usable responses from ancestral tourists travelling throughout Scotland. As such, this study explores the development of scale of ancestral tourist motivations, and a preliminary stage of analysis has resulted in the identification of 4 factors: exploring ancestral links; entertainment and attractions; locally produced; and general country attributes. The final stage will be completed in September of 2015