The preferred mix of urban and rural destinations in domestic and international travel

While tourists usually choose a combination of urban and rural destinations for the same trip, research in tourism has focused primarily on one type of tourism. The purpose of this research is to investigate the tourist’s continuum preferences of urban and rural destinations and ascertain the influence of the tourists’ residence, experience, and characteristics on their preferences in the contexts of international and domestic travel. The study proposes a mediation model to examine the direct and indirect effects of tourist’s experience and characteristics on urban and rural preferences and to shed more light on differences obtained by sociodemographic variables. We found that most respondents prefer a combination of urban and rural destinations as opposed to just one. Our results indicate that growing up in the city influences tourists’ experiences and characteristics, which, in turn, affects their urban/rural preferences. Urban residents prefer more urban destinations and vice versa for rural residents.