Satisfaction and motivation in cultural destinations: Towards those tourists attracted by intangible heritage in Cuenca (Ecuador)

The intangible heritage increasingly associated with tourism in a territory is today, an element that is attracting more and more visitors. However, there are still few studies that address issues such as the motivation of these tourists, especially in contexts like those of Latin America. The aim of this research is to analyze the relationship between the motivation and satisfaction obtained by tourists who have visited the places associated with the Panama hat (recognized as an Intangible Heritage by UNESCO in 2012) in the city of Cuenca (Ecuador). The work creates a segmentation of tourists based on three dimensions: the cultural, another related to leisure and the last in reference to social and labor issues. The results, where a factorial analysis, a cluster analysis and an analysis of variance (ANOVA) were applied, show that the cultural aspect of motivation is the most important, being, however, the motivation for leisure issues which gives one a better assessment of their knowledge of the Panama hat, Cuenca s heritage or satisfaction with the trip.