Nikolaos Tsitsoulis

Analysis of Thematic Hotels and Cooperation: Focus Field Bike Hotels Nikolaos Tsitsoulis

Research Paper from the year 2013 in the subject Tourism, Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts (School of Business), course: Applied Research Project, language: English, abstract: It is considered that hotels with a generic offer suffer from reduced demand. One possible solution to improve the performance is a thematic specialization that provides added value for specific niches and target groups. The focus of this paper is to analyse the bike tourism market of the greater Alpine region as well as other countries were bike tourism is consider to be developed, as USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Previous research in field of bike tourism is relatively small, highly fragmented and out-dated. From the other side, research in the field of specialized bike hotels barely exists. In order to acquire more information two online survey were developed directed to the supply and demand side respectively. The analysis is conducted by comparing the supply side and the demand side The findings of this paper are critical for hotels interested in generating profit in bike tourism. Bike tourism presents itself a micro niche and can be assigned to further segmentation according to experiences, needs and values of bikers. The data obtained reveals that different biker groups have different values, needs and expectations towards bike hotels.