Motivating Tourism: A Case of Club Mahindra Holidays

Attempts have been made for long to classify tourists by activities, interests and opinions (AIOs), by values and even, typology of the tourist based on personality characteristics. Pearce (1993) observes, tourist motivation is in fact "discretionary, episodic, future oriented, dynamic, socially influenced, and evolving" with "attitudes, behavioural intentions, values, preferences, beliefs, needs, and goals thereby presenting spaghetti of overlapping and interlocking concepts". This research paper is a case study of how 'Club Mahindra Holidays' flagship brand of Mahindra Holidays & Resorts India Ltd., (MHRIL) started in 1996, has been successful in motivating tourism in general and in India in particular. It also attempts to understand how tourism is based on motivating theories and draw lessons for evolving successful tourism strategies based on the core values such as Reliability, Trust and Customer Satisfaction. The case study will enable tourism organizations to adopt best practices, strategize well for success and contribute to economic development in this era of globalization.