Cultural tourism: Case study Portugal

Cultural tourism is nowadays considered the fastest growing market in tourism. The research was obtained to gain further insight about cultural tourists. The study explored cultural tourists in Portugal through investigating the profile, motivation and level of interest of cultural tourists, in the specific case of Silves. Silves is a small town in the Algarve region, and as the former Capital of the Algarve in the period when the Arabs were ruling, the town is left with Arabic Heritage.

The literature of cultural tourism revealed that further research is needed about the relation between the dependent variable of socio-demographics/trip characteristics and motivation and preferences for behavioural items of the cultural tourists.

A combination of primary and secondary research has been applied in order to examine the topic, achieve the objectives and test the hypotheses. For the primary research, a survey was carried out at the site of Silves in Portugal, whereby altogether 196 valid surveys were obtained.