Determinants of tourists' length of stay in cultural destination: one-night vs longer stays

Purpose - This paper aims to empirically analyze tourists' length of stay in Istanbul, an important cultural destination. The objective of the study is twofold: (1) uncovering the qualitative difference between one-night visitors and longer stay visitors and (2) for those visitors staying longer at the tourism destination, investigating the key determinants of length of stay. Design/methodology/approach - This research was carried out using a self-administered questionnaire distributed to international tourists who were about to leave the destination. To perform the analysis, we applied a two-step approach: first, we opted for classical binary logit to investigate the tourists' group membership (one-night vs longer stays); second, we applied a zero-truncated Poisson model for uncovering the drivers of length of stay for longer stay visitors. Findings - The results confirmed the structural difference between the two visitor subgroups. Moreover, we found a positive impact of cultural attributes on tourists' length of stay. Practical implications - The findings provide useful information for destination managers and planners, highlighting the importance of designing different tourism policies in light of tourists' heterogeneity. Moreover, the results confirmed the importance of the preservation and promotion of cultural attributes, given that these are a key factor in determining the success of a destination. Originality/value - The importance and originality of this study are that it explores the impact of cultural/ heritage attributes of the destination on tourists' length of stay. Moreover, it sheds light on the qualitative difference between short- and long-stay visitors.