Motivations of North American Tourists from Cruisers to Visit Cultural-Historical Destination (Dubrovnik/Croatia)

Purpose ? The key to understanding motivation of tourists from cruisers who are visiting Dubrovnik is to understand their needs and wants for consuming history and culture as tourism products. The purpose of this paper is to assess the motivations of North American tourists visiting Dubrovnik on their cruises around the Mediterranean. Design/Methods/Approach ? In this paper, the author decided to use two paradigms: pragmatism and positivism, which are usually followed by quantitative techniques of data collection. A structured questionnaire enabled author to collect quantitative data that were processed by descriptive statistics. Findings ? The paper introduces new perspective on motivations of North American tourists who visit Dubrovnik on their cruises around the Mediterranean. The findings indicated that Cultural component was the most important dimension perceived by North American tourist, for choosing cruises with Dubrovnik as one of port of calls on their itinerary. Research limitations ? Main limitations of this research paper were relatively small sample size and participants from only one cruise company. Originality ? The article depicts motivation of North American tourists from cruise ships that choose to visit cultural-historical destination (Dubrovnik)