Modeling tourists' length of stay: does one Model fit all?

Examining the individual heterogeneity of tourists is fundamental to providing insights on tourist market segmentation, targeting potential markets and niches, and proposing suitable marketing strategies. However, most past studies failed to incorporate this individual heterogeneity in an integral way. This study utilizes a latent class duration model to investigate the latent segments of tourists regarding the preference of length of stay (LOS) in a destination. The study unveils a substantial amount of latent heterogeneity across the sample, and our empirical results identify two latent classes of tourists, namely short-duration and long-duration tourists. These classes share distinct LOS preferences, and information sources and travel partners have no significant influences in predicting the LOS of short-duration tourists. Therefore, the “one-fit-all” solution from the conventional duration model could be misleading, and this highlighted heterogeneity provides destination marketing organizations (DMOs) with the incentive to segment the tourists and offer specific tourism products and bundles.