The categorisation of the Asian repeat tourists: A preliminary study

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, many inbound tourists visited Japan. Tourists from Asian countries and regions tend to become repeat tourists (repeaters), thus the Japanese national government has targeted these repeaters to boost the country's tourism. To understand these repeaters further, this study attempted to categorise Asian repeaters based on their behaviours after analyzing interview data collected in 2018. The categorisation is based on their revisit intentions to Japan with the repeaters categorised into three groups: (1) variety seekers who visit multiple destinations in Japan, (2) heavy variety seekers who seek out and explore new destinations in Japan, and (3) daily life seekers who visit the same places in Japan more than once. This study is a preliminary research on this topic, which will be extended in the future.