Abstract Age has always been a segmentation variable in tourism statistics and tourism marketing. It is found that people of different age groups have different interests in sports tourism and their consumer behavior are different. With all the literature available, the justification of age as a segmentation variable can hardly be found. This paper just deals with this issue and analyzes the influence of age on travel decision-making based on both the national statistics of China and Great Britain, and the survey on British visitors in China. The analysis is made from three perspectives: British inbound travel, British outbound travel and British visitors coming to China. The second-hand data employed are taken from the United Kingdom Travel Statistics Office, China Tourism Annuals, the United Kingdom National Statistics, etc. The first-hand data are sourced from the survey conducted in six major tourism cities in China and aid enormously in analysis serving as the complementary data of this paper. British tourists and American tourists are compared to further the understanding of age and travel. Age psychology has been used to analyze the characteristics of different age groups. In addition to the tourism statistics home and abroad, this paper also quoted from other sources concerning age and employment, age and income, age and health, age and purpose of travel, etc. It finds out the travel decision-making patterns of different age groups and raises the point of "age priority" in travel. People of a particular age range have different characteristics from people of another age group. These distinctive features affect decision-making in tourism. Even though more and more elderly people began to travel worldwide, they will never become the primary tourist market replacing the middle aged group restrained by their health and income. The 25-44 age group is the primary tourist market in Britain followed by the 45-64 age group. Other age groups travel less frequently. These findings challenge the widely accepted view that the elderly market in Britain is the largest segmentation market of China. The patterns in terms of age reflected in the British tourist market are generally applied to other tourist markets around the world.
2012, Vol. 27 
