**4. Travel motivations**

Motivation is defined by Myers [22] as the need or desire and stimulus to achieve the goal behaviour. Hsu et al. [11] stated that tourists behave as they do because of motivations. Escape from the actual routine, relaxation, prestige, nostalgia, improved relationship, social interaction, adventure, health, personal development, novelty, education, seclusion and romance are common reasons of tourist motivations [11]. The basic motivation theory describes a dynamic process of internal psychological factors (needs, desires and goals) that will produce a level of discomfort and tension, and this will meet the requirements.

Many researchers argue that tourists travel due to push and pull factors by a destination [5]. The push factors are related to internal factors that motivate individuals to travel, while the pull factors are related to the external factors that determine their travel on where, when and how [9]. Uysal and Hagan [31] stated that push and pull factors are acting separately and tourists travel due to the variable interests' motivation in making travel decisions. According to Bashar [4] most of the push factors which are origin related are intangible or intrinsic of the individual travellers, while the pull factor on the contrary are those that emerged because of the attractiveness of a destination as perceived by the tourist.

However, motivation studies are different in each area (place) and time. Furthermore, each traveller is different based on age, motivation and need [23–24]. Studies that have been conducted [2] stated that long-haul tourists' travels were motivated because of 'knowledge' and 'culture' to Hong Kong. A study by Correia et al. [5] on Portuguese tourists travelling in Latin America and Africa found that the main push motivation of long-haul travellers was to 'relax', while pull motivation was 'landscapes'. Meanwhile, a study conducted by Assiouras et al. [1] in Greece found that the main push factor was 'knowledge', while 'culture and history' were the main pull motivations of long-haul travellers travelling from China, Korea and Japan.
