Egypt wedding tourism destinations: a new tourism demand motivator: the case of El Gouna

الملخص EN

With the need to increase tourism demand by focusing on alternative forms of tourism, wedding based tourism has gained significant attention in recent years, providing new tourism opportunities in accordance with such demand.

Tourism motivations are important factors in understanding tourist behavior in relation to destination's choice, especially for the wedding market.

However, very little research has been conducted regarding the travel behavior of wedding tourism.

The purpose of the study was to describe the various travel motivations of wedding tourism to one of the more attractive tourism destinations in Egypt with its distinctive characteristics, which is El Gouna, in Hurghada, Red Sea.

The study adopts a mixed method based on an exploratory quantitative and qualitative approaches for data collection.

It embraces the demand-side perspective in order to deepen the knowledge about the motivation that drives people to celebrate their wedding outside their hometown.

Findings revealed that wedding tourists are primarily attracted by the destination's attributes such as the “sea, sun and sand” in the case of El Gouna considered a summer destination, which forms part of an attractive experience or adventure.

And that marketing and promoting El Gouna as a wedding destination is still as its first stages.

Thus, it was suggested that in order to encourage wedding tourism, increasing marketing and promotion efforts could help to be an effective tool.