Aktywność turystyczno-wypoczynkowa Polaków będących na emigracji w Londynie w latach 2004-2008

Abstract

The central concern of this PhD thesis is tourist activity of Polish immigrants living in London between 2004 and 2008. The United Kingdom was a consistently popular migration destination for Poles after Poland joined the EU in 2004. According to the UK Office for National Statistics (ONS) there was a very high degree of concentration of Polish immigrants to the UK and London in the entire period, 2004-2008. However, the available data regarding demographic and socio-economic profile of Polish immigrants living in London is poor. This analysis focuses on Poles living in London and provides new evidence of their tourist behavior. There is weak conceptualization of the relationship between tourism and migration in Polish literature. Research on tourist activity of immigrants suffers from a lack of comprehensive and reliable data. The research aims to shape thinking about how we understand the changes of tourist behavior model, provide new evidence for immigrants’ type of tourism preferences, decisions to travel and their choices of destination. The author hopes that the analyses will contribute to a better understanding of processes determining immigrants’ tourist behaviour. In response to the research question, the present work formulates the following main five hypotheses: 1.The Polish immigrants’ tourist behavior model is different from the general population of the British and Polish; 2.The Poles travel propensity will modify with the length of stay. The length of time in the UK will determine the changes of immigrants’ tourist behavior. The tourism preferences of Poles in London will be similar to the host community; 3.Visiting Friends and Relatives (VFR) is the main type of tourism preferred by Polish immigrants in London. There is a tendency to believe that, the longer period of residences in the host country the more types of tourism will appear; 4.The demographic, socioeconomic, geographic factors determines the level of travel propensity of immigrants; 5.Demographic, socioeconomic, geographic, determinants and motives effect immigrants’ decisions to travel and their choices of destination. To achieve these objectives, the thesis is divided into a number of parts, as follows: Part One sets the context by offering some definitions of key terms, introducing the basic concepts of general tourist behavior and activity, study method, and briefly travel preferences of Polish and British population. Part Two concentrates on the characteristics of respondents. It does discuss some of the primary characteristics, which make the study of immigrants’ tourist behavior a particularly complex subject. Part Three looks at the leisure behavior of the Polish immigrants. Since tourism and leisure have been regarded as two separate areas of research and study, there has been relatively little exchange of theories between them (Jansen-Verbeke and Dietvorst, 1987). However, a growing number of researchers have begun to draw tentative relationship between leisure and tourism. In chapter three of the thesis we looked at how respondents spent their leisure time outdoors in London. The fourth and fifth parts of thesis concentrate on the factors that influence tourist activity. We also looked at the characteristics of tourists and their trips, social profiles, trip distances, modes of transport and types of accommodation, the duration, purpose and frequency of visits Tourist behavior is a fascinating but difficult subject to research. The Polish immigrants were influenced in their decisions to travel by many determinants. The author, in the fifth part of thesis, has tried to select determinants that affect the Polish immigrants’ level of travel propensity and choices of destination. Each chapter features conclusions and discussions points. At the end, the author presented a conclusion about immigrants’ tourism behavior. It was provided with full information about the Polish immigrants, their place of stay, work and leisure time preferences.