Introduction

Motivation is the starting point for all the trip-related events. The point why tourists
choose to leave their homes and travel to other places can contribute to a better
understanding of tourism. It can also be of great help for trip planners. After
Crompton (1979) proposed push and pull factors in order to examine the tourists’
motivations for travelling to a particular destination, numerous studies (Devesa,
Laguna, & Palacios, 2010; Hanqin & Lam, 1999; Kozak, 2002; Lo & Lee, 2011;
Phau, Lee, & Quintal, 2013; Prayag & Hosany, 2014; Yoon & Uysal, 2005) were
conducted to test and to integrate this concept. In this model, the push factors are
treated as the internal factors by which people feel motivated for the trip considering
their own needs. Following that, pull factors of destinations attract people towards
themselves with respect to their motivation.
One of the positive features of Crompton’s model was its dynamism, which allowed
its succeeding researches to add some factors to the model or remove some with
regard to the tourists’ nationality and their own destinations. Some push factors,
including gaining knowledge, escape, and prestige as well as strengthening the
relationships, have been the fundamentals of many studies. On the other hand, the
accessibility of the destination, destination attractions, entertainment centres, and
infrastructures were among the most common factors of attraction. A more careful
look at the previous research projects shows that the trip structure, e.g. the state of
being cultural and being entertaining, probably represents the tourists’ motivation for
the trip to that place. In the majority of previous studies, the tourists’ motivation for
the trip has been merely considered with no attention paid to the concept of the
destination. Nonetheless, in this study, Antalya was considered a recreational
destination and Istanbul a cultural one.

This study tries to find out whether recreational destinations (e.g. Antalya) and/or
cultural destinations (e.g. Istanbul) can be targeted by special groups of tourists with
specific motivations. It also tries to show what needs to be done in order to attract
more tourists to each of these destinations.
The current research aims at examining the difference between the trip-related motivations held
by those tourists who choose recreational destinations and those who choose cultural ones. To do
so, in August 2013, 401 questionnaires were handed to Iranian tourists planning to take a trip to
Istanbul and Antalya, Turkey. The results of the t-tests demonstrated that those tourists
considering escape to be their major motivation for the trip tended to travel to tourist resorts
more, and the recreational goal of the destination played the most significant role for them. On
the other hand, those who travel for ego-enhancement try to practice more cultural destinations
and place great value on tourist attractions

Literature review
For many years, the tourism statistics suggested what kind of tourists take the trip,
when and where they start and finish their trip, and how much they spend on a trip.
However, some researches (Crompton, 1979; Dann, 1977; Iso-Ahola, 1982; Pearce,
1993; Pearce & Caltabiano, 1983; Ryan & Glendon, 1998) were conducted in 1980s
in order to address the following question: why do tourists travel? Dann (1977)
argued that the motivations for a trip stem from two concepts called anomie and ego-
enhancement. The first group consists of those individuals who prefer to travel to
escape from their daily and routine life. The second group includes those people who
take a trip in order to enhance their knowledge about their world. Dann believes that
the real decision made by a tourist for travelling depends upon his/her own needs,
which means an individual’s internal motivations or the push factors play a more
significant role in the destination chosen by a tourist compared to the destination
attractions. Two years after that, in 1979, Crompton proposed his own model for the
push and the pull factors and elaborated on the significance of the role played by the
destination in attracting tourists. Crompton demonstrated that there are seven factors
that motivate people to leave their own home to travel to another place. He named
them push factors. Likewise, after people make a clear decision about the trip based
on their own needs, the different features of the destination cause them to choose one
destination among all the possible options for a trip. After Dann and Crompton, Iso-
Ahola proposed his motivational theory in 1982 and regarded escape and exploration
as two significant factors which motivate tourists. He examined the motivation for a
trip in two aspects named intrapersonal and interpersonal. Making new friends can be
fallen into the intrapersonal category while seeking new things can be fallen into the
interpersonal one.
Following the consecutive researches, the approach to the procedures for trip-related
motivations was made by Pearce and Caltabiano (1983) and Pearce (1993) according
to the hierarchy of needs based by Maslow (1943). Despite the fact that Pearce found
this approach to be a suitable base for evaluation, due to the lack of motivational
theories in tourism, Ryan (2002) started to criticize this approach stating that it seeks
to examine empirical concepts more than motivational ones. Later on, Pearce
cooperating with Lee changed the concept “Travel Career Ladder” to “Travel Career
Approach” (Pearce & Lee, 2005). Pearce considered three levels of motivation based
on life stages and experience gained from a trip (travel experience). In the first level,
the designed model of main motivations, which are common among most people, can
be observed. These factors include seeking new things, escape, relaxation, relief, and
relationship enhancement. The more someone travels, the more motivation he/she
gains.

The examination of recent studies (Gilbert & Terrata, 2001; Hanqin & Lam, 1999;
Kim, Jogaratnam, & Noh, 2006; Kozak, 2002; Mohsin & Alsawafi, 2011; Phau et al.,
2013; Sangpikul, 2008; Sirakaya, Uysal, & Yoshioka, 2003) in the area of travel
motivation demonstrates that among the proposed models, Crompton’s (1979) push
and pull factors are more popular among researchers. Nonetheless, escape and
knowledge (ego-enhancement) were considered to be the two ultimate travel
motivations in the majority of previous studies. This fact shows a great similarity
between Dann (1977) and Iso-Ahola (1982) travel motivations theory on one hand,
and Crampton’s (1979) Push and Pull factors on the other.

Hypothesis 1:Escape and ego-enhancement are the first two general travel motivations.

Investigation of previous studies on tourist motivation shows that there is a great

difference between the motivations of travelling to a cultural destination and a
recreational one. It seems that tourists who travel to a cultural destination seek new
knowledge. Here are some studies which show this fact. Hanqin and Lam (1999)
showed that gaining knowledge and the need for respect and development of human
relationship were the most important push factors among the Chinese tourists who
travelled to Hong Kong. Gilbert and Terrata (2001) examined the motivation in
Japanese tourists during their visits to the UK. They found that the most significant
internal push factors in Japanese tourists in general were visiting landscapes and
natural attractions. Sangpikul (2008) investigated elderly Japanese tourists who
travelled to Thailand. In his research, gaining knowledge was the most substantial
push factors for this type of tourists. Following that, Hsu, Cai, and Mimi (2010) also
showed that knowledge is the first reason for tourists travelling to Hong Kong. Hua
and Yoo (2011) were the other group of researchers who found that tourists with
cultural motivation try cultural destinations. They investigated Chinese tourists who
selected the United States for their travel destination. As it is clear in these researches,
all of these mentioned destinations, including Hong Kong, United Kingdom,
Thailand, and the United States, have cultural merits and attractions.

On The other hand, tourists who travel to a recreational destination seem to escape
from their routines. Kim et al. (2006), conducted some research on trip motivations
amongst American students, who had selected American beaches for their holidays.
Escape, relaxation, and entertainment were among their most important push factors.
PH, et al. (2013) investigated the motivation for tourists in choosing private parks.
Escape and health, respect for cultural and natural resources, and curiosity were the
three important push factors for them in choosing those parks. Van der Merwe,
Slabbert, and Saayman (2011) also showed that escape and relaxation were the most
important motives for tourists who travel to five marine resorts of South Africa.
Although Hua and Yoo (2011) found that knowledge is the first motivation for
Chinese to travel to The United States; Johanson (2007) showed that escape is the
first motivation for people with this nationality to travel to the US. However, there is
a big difference between these two research projects. The first one is more general
and has paid attention to whole aspects of the US whereas the latter is more specific
and has investigated Chinese tourists who had travelled to Hawaii as a recreational
destination. Kau and Lim (2005) also conducted some research on push and pull
factors of Chinese in travelling to another island-based country named Singapore. Just
like other recreational destinations, their first motivation has been escape. As this
paragraph suggests, people who took trips to parks, beaches, and tourism resorts have
just one priority for their trip, escape.

Among all of the previous researches on pull and push factors, Kozak’s (2002)
research was more comprehensive. He demonstrated that there is a remarkable
difference between the motivation of multinational people and that of people with the
same nationality during their visits to other countries. In his research, he examined the
way British and German people travel to Mallorca and Turkey. In that study, Germans
were more interested in culture than British people whereas British people were
much more motivated by entertainment compared to Germans. Regarding the
destination, those tourists who chose to travel to turkey, were more interested in
culture. As the results of Hua and Yoo (2011) and Johanson (2007) showed different
motivations for travelling to a huge country such as the United States, it seems that
the same different motivation would be considered for other huge countries such as
Turkey. In these multi-dimensional countries, which have both cultural and
recreational destinations, it seems the concept of destination is more effective than the
origin of tourists who are travelling there. Although Prayag and Ryan (2011) and
Kozak (2002) have shown that nationality of tourists affect their motivation in
travelling to other places to some extent, the current study has focused on the concept
of destination which is cultural or recreational. In order to reach this goal, Antalya is
considered a recreational destination and Istanbul a cultural one
Methodology
Because the current research aimed at investigating the gap between the motivation of
those tourists who travelled to different kinds of destinations, Antalya was chosen as
the tourist resort, and Istanbul was considered the cultural destination. To accomplish
this goal, 560 questionnaires were distributed among the Iranian travellers at Imam
Khomeini International Airport. A total of 401 reliable questionnaires were
collected out of 560 distributed questionnaires. As Istanbul is considered to be the
main center for shopping, business, and immigration for Iranian travellers, the
questionnaires, designed for people who wished to travel to this city, were distributed
merely among those who chose to travel to Istanbul for leisure. The questionnaires
were distributed in August 2013. August is one of the most popular months of the
year for Iranians to take a trip. As Iran and Turkey are both Islamic countries with
Muslim population, the researchers preferred to wait until Ramadan – a taboo
month – came to its end so that tourism could back to its normal condition, and,
therefore, damage to the reliability of the responses would be prevented. Final items
of the questionnaire were selected using previous researches (Correia, Oom do
Valle, & Moc¸o, 2007; Hanqin & Lam, 1999; Hua & Yoo, 2011; Kau & Lim, 2005;
Kim et al., 2006; Kozak, 2002; Sirakaya et al., 2003), interviews, and pilot tests. 26
items related to push factors and 21 items about pull factors, which were asked based
upon a five point Likert-type importance scale, were reduced to five push factors and
five pull factors, after factor analysis, to facilitate the process of analysis. Some
items were removed because they were not suitable for the factor analysis.
The SPSS program was employed to analyse the data. Exploratory factor analysis
with varimax rotation approach was performed to decrease 47 push and pull items to
fewer factors. Because the items of the factors were not equal, the variance of the
factors could not be considered a suitable criterion for selecting the priority of factors
after factor analysis. Therefore, the score of the mean test was regarded as the
importance criterion. In order to compare the means significance of the factors, an
independent t-test was used to determine the difference between the motivation of
those tourists who chose to travel to Istanbul and those who chose Antalya. In the end,
push factors and pull factors were ranked by their means in each destination
separately.
Results
Despite the fact that it was attempted to distribute the questionnaires between the
travelers of Istanbul and Antalya equally, 192 questionnaires for Istanbul and 205
questionnaires for Antalya were inserted in SPSS software for analysis since all
the returned questionnaires were not valid. In total, 61% of the respondents were
females while 39% were males. 35% of the samples were singles while 65% were
married people. The respondents were categorized into three groups in terms of their
age: 1- The young (18 – 35 years of age) 2- The middle-aged (36 – 55 years of age) 3-
The elderly (more than 56 years of age)

The young group was the most frequent group of Iranian travellers visiting Turkey
(63%). The middle-aged group constituted 31% of the sample while the group for the
elderly constituted 6% of the sample. In terms of level of education, 20% of the
sample held a diploma degree or lower than that, 52% of the sample held a Bachelor’s
degree, and 28% of the sample held a Master’s or a PhD degree.
At the beginning, the research consisted of more items obtained from the existing
interviews and from the previous studies; however, some of items were removed
regarding factor analysis. This removal had two main reasons. First, some items
lacked suitable reliability scores. Second, they were not suitable for the factor analysis
of the current research, and, as a result, they were not included in any of the factors.
For example, the item “cultural similarity to Iran” was removed due to the lack of
suitable reliability. Furthermore, the item “Being with other tourists”, which was
initially supposed to be included in the relationship factor, did not show any
significant factor-based effect in any of these factors. Table 1 shows the push factors
of Iranians who travel to Turkey.
The average of the above factors shows that escape, relaxation, and Ego-enhancement
were the most prominent factors and fun, relationship enhancement, and prestige are
in the other levels. The results of these tables approved the first hypothesis of this
research which claims Escape and Ego-enhancement to be the first two general travel
motivations. Table 2 shows the pull factors of Turkey, attracting Iranians.
The table for the pull factors shows that accessibility and entertainment were the most
significant tourisms factors in Turkey for the Iranian travellers. Besides, shopping
centres and infrastructures are in the other levels of significance. “No requirement for
getting visa for Iranians”, “comparably better expenses than other destinations”, and
“convenient access for Iranians” were the main options formulating the accessibility.
The results of these two tables approved the first hypothesis of this research that was
escape and ego- enhancement being the first two general travel motivations.
Although the main purpose of Iranian travellers for travelling to Turkey was shown to
be their main motivation for escape, accessibility was the most important pull factor;
the average comparison between the factors in those tourists who preferred to choose
the cultural destination of Istanbul and those who selected the recreational aspects of
Antalya was different. Table 3 shows the means comparison among Iranians who
travel to these two kinds of destinations.

The results of the above table show that at the significant level of 95%, among the
push factors, three factors, including escape, prestige, and relationship enhancement,
are significantly different from each other. This means that those travellers who prefer
to choose tourist resorts need more relaxation, escape, prestige, and more relationship
enhancement compared to those who travel to a cultural destination. Likewise, the
entertainment of in a destination is more significance for those tourists who are
interested in recreational destinations. If we consider the level of significance to be
90%, accessibility and infrastructures of a destination play a more important role for
travellers of tourist resorts. The ranking for the significance of the push factors and
the attraction of these two kinds of destinations for Iranian tourists based upon the
mean for both recreational (Antalya) and cultural (Istanbul) destinations may
hopefully provide a better understanding of the topic. This ranking is provided in
Table 4.

As it can be observed, for the push factors, while Istanbul is the most important
priority for the trip and stands out as a cultural destination for ego-enhancement, for
those tourist resorts, including Antalya, this is the fourth priority. Instead, escape, fun,
and relationship enhancement are more significant factors in tourist resorts.
For the pull factors, a cultural destination, including Istanbul, attracts tourists mainly
because of its own attractions and shopping centers. For recreational destinations,
entertainments and infrastructures of destination exert more influence over tourists.
Therefore, regarding the results of the three latter tables, the second hypothesis of this
study seems acceptable, which states that there are differences between travel
motivations when travelling to cultural and recreational destinations.

Conclusion and implications

The total results of the current research show that for Iranian travellers, two personal
needs or motivations, including escape and ego-enhancement, are the most important
push factors for trips to Turkey. This finding is consistent with the findings of most of
the studies after Crompton (1979), and these points are always treated as the most
important motivational factors. When Crompton proposed his motivational model,
Dann (1977) and Iso-Ahola (1982) proposed their motivational models, and both of
them regarded escape and ego-enhancement as two fundamental push factors for a
trip. Now, after many years of more investigations over Crompton’s motivational
theory, it has been found out that among the seven push factors proposed by him,
escape and ego-enhancement provide the basis for decisions to be made for travelling.

The point that has been somehow embedded in this theory (push and pull Factors) in
these past years is the role that motivation plays in choosing the destination of any
trip. By examining the previous studies, we could convey this fact that those tourists
whose main motivation for a trip is ego-enhancement tend to go to cultural
destinations (Hanqin & Lam, 1999; Kozak, 2002), and those who take a trip to escape
and to relax tend to experience tourist resorts more (Kim et al., 2006; Phau et al.,
2013). In this research, those tourists who showed a great tendency towards ego-
enhancement, preferred to choose the cultural aspect of Istanbul while those whose
most important motivation was escape, chose tourist resorts of Antalya. Earlier,
Kozak (2002) had already pointed out this issue by considering Turkey and Mallorca.
His findings suggested that tourists who choose Turkey for a visit are culturally much
more motivated than those who travel to Mallorca Islands. With respect to the
findings of the current research, it is completely justifiable that tourists who travel to
the resorts of Mallorca have less cultural motivation than those who travel to Turkey.
A point which was paid no attention to neither in Kozak’s research nor in any of the
previous studies is that the type of destination is much more influential than a
particular country in terms of motivating the tourists with different motivations and
attracting them. Therefore, those individuals who tend to escape from their homes
prefer to travel to tourist resorts. This destination may be an island (Van der Merwe et
al., 2011), a coastal town, a mountainous area, or a natural park (Phau et al., 2013).
Conversely, those who seek to gain knowledge and experience ego-enhancement can
have many different choices. They can travel to a city with many tourist attractions
(Prayag & Hosany, 2014), or take a trip to a highly civilized country (Hanqin & Lam,
1999), or try an area with a new and different culture. One of the important points that
cannot be neglected easily is travel limitations and travel companions, in which a
tourist who intends to gain knowledge may be attracted to a tourist resort due to
his/her family friends selection and vice versa.

For different types of pull factors, accessibility, both in this research and in the other
previous researches (Hanqin & Lam, 1999; Kim et al., 2006; Phau et al., 2013), is said
to be a key topic, and it shows that accessibility can be the most important pull factor
at least in the available destinations. According to Table 4, entertainment can be
regarded as the main priority in the tourist resorts, which can attract the tourists,
while for a cultural destination, the attractions of that destination is of great
significance. It may be due to this reason that a tourist who travels to a tourist resort
may wish to spend some time in a hotel and by the beach whereas a traveller who
takes a trip to a cultural destination may prefer to stay in a hotel just for the sake of
sleeping and daily relaxation. This is one of the topics which can draw the attention of
many hotel owners as well as planners, and they can take them into consideration
while making policies. These results show that high-grade and prestigious hotels are
more required in recreational destination as well as centres for entertainment. One of
the other differences between a tourist with the knowledge-based motivation and one
with the escape-oriented motivation is that the latter pays more attention to the
infrastructures of a destination. It may seem completely logical that a tourist who
travels in order to get rid of work and daily life and mental concerns is less willing to
encounter the weak infrastructures and prefers to choose a destination where he can
feel more relieved and comfortable. In cultural tourism, the traveller may be ready to
ignore some infrastructural problems in exchange for learning many new things.
Travel agencies should also pay attention to their customers’ travel motivations. If
travellers are looking for knowledge, they should be suggested cultural destinations,
and when they want to escape their routines, recreational destinations could be the
best suggestion for them

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