Military service, destination image and repeat visitation on a Greek border island

Abstract

The obligatory military service for adult Greek male citizens creates a particular form of domestic “tourism”, although the members of the Armed Forces are not officially included in tourism statistics. Aim of this paper that takes as a case study the Greek border island of Samothrace in the Northern Aegean is to discuss how the so-called here “army tourism” could be used to develop a competitive advantage for the destination. A structured questionnaire method has been used in order to a) identify aspects of the soldiers’ “tourist” behaviour, b) evaluate destination image from the soldiers’ point of view, c) find out whether the soldiers wish to return as tourists to the island or not and underline the reasons leading to this decision and finally d) analyze the soldiers’ word-of-mouth