Motivation for family vacations with young children: anecdotes from the Internet

Family travel receives growing attention from both the travel industry and academia, but they ignore a vital segment of the family holiday: nuclear families that travel with young children. This study investigated the motivations that drive this market segment to take vacations as a starting point to understand the travel behavior of family tourists, especially those with young and dependent children. By employing netnography, this study collected and analyzed 97 travel diaries from five travel blogs and one travel forum in 2015. Five motivation themes emerged, namely they are spending quality time with children, creating pleasant memories, learning and development, compensation for children, and self-compensation. Both theoretical and practical implications are discussed and future research is suggested.