Barcelona's tourists characterized from the attitudinal perspective

Attitudes represent tourists values and guide their behavior. Due to the fact that attitudes are a mid-term between the abstractness of values and the specificity of behavior, attitudes can be a good tool to characterize Barcelona s visitors. The present research study pursues to: A) identify the different types of tourists that visit the city of Barcelona based on tourist travel attitudes; and B) to analyze their attitude towards Barcelons attractions related to culture, authenticity and its price. The study has been conducted based on a sample of 258 cases of foreigners from the top five destinations that visit Barcelona. In order to identify the different typologies of tourists, the values segmentation model of Schwartz (2004) has been adapted to tourists travel attitudes. Despite the heterogeneity of tourists that visit Barcelona, the obtained results indicate that majority of visitors are more interested in entertainment than in culture. However, they are more motivated in authenticity than in notoriety or popular attractions. Pricewise, despite the increase in the last two years in hotel services, the destination is not perceived as an expensive city; Barcelonas level of prices will not have a negative impact on the development of its tourism industry.