A tourist typology based on an ex ante rather than an ex post approach is proposed and examined. An ‘ex ante’ tourist classification can facilitate the planning process and provide a basis for tourism marketing. Five conceptual tourist classifications were formulated. Two samples (N = 615, 1997) and (N = 528, 2002) were used to test the proposed classification. The ‘social tourist’ classification (goes where friends, family and neighbours go) captured over 45% of the tourist classifications, followed by the ‘conventional tourist’ (19.8%, relies largely on the services of a travel agent), the ‘marketing tourist’ (17.5%, goes to places that are widely advertised), the ‘planning tourist’ (10.7%, plans all aspects of the vacation trip in detail), and finally the ‘impulsive tourist’ (6.1%, decides on the spur of the moment). The respondents' classifications were also confirmed by a separate set of data (20 questions) which describe each tourist category. The validity of the theoretical tourist typology was tested by a ‘confirmatory factory analysis’ to ensure that the conceptual model and the 20 questions were compatible.
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