Tourism development and planning are evidently guided by tourist behaviour; therefore, a thorough examination is needed to understand and decode that behaviour [20]. Prominent researchers [21,22,23,24] have studied tourism consumption and provided a rich literature with useful conclusions. Urry, in his seminal works (1990, 1992, 1995) [25,26,27], argued that tourism consumption is directly related to changes in society. Additionally, many notable researchers have depicted society’s changes and the way life is consumed [25,28,29,30,31]. Classification of tourism lifestyles, beliefs and norms is essential for the tourism domain because of the heterogeneous and multidimensional position of tourism destinations in relation to the variety of human perceptions relating to the tourism experience [32,33]. Over recent years there has been a significant switch in consumer behaviour and consumption patterns within the tourism context [34]. New products have emerged to satisfy the emotional, social and natural needs of the current customers. Thus, new tourism packages are developed to address and satisfy the well-educated, independent and high self-esteem tourists of the twenty-first century.

Boorstin (1964) [28] cleverly discussed life consumption through ‘pseudo-events’, in the sense of media publicity and advertising exaggerations. Ritzer (1983) [35] added to Boorstin’s (1964) [28] theory about the ‘McDonaldisation’ and ‘Disneyfication’ of society, meaning that we all consume the same products with a lack of human identity. Mass tourism is associated with the notion of ‘Disneyfication’, with all tourists spending their holidays in the same way and acquiring the same or similar experiences [36]. Urry (1990, 1992, 1995) [25,26,27] defined ‘the tourist gaze’ as the way tourism is experienced in the different phases of tourism development, with the consumer wanting to escape from similar consumption and become more experienced [37].

According to Tung and Brent (2011) [38], an important aspect of tourism consumption that is circumscribed in neo/post Fordism is the construction of tourism experiences as memories and recollections of the time spent in a destination. In 1999, Pine and Gilmore [39] argued that the ‘experience’ is the core characteristic of holidaymaking. An experience can be gauged against human behaviour, beliefs, socioeconomic status and cultural characteristics [40,41,42,43,44,45]. Storytelling is a way of expressing experiences which are dynamic and memorable [38]. This is further supported by Larsen (2007: 16) [46], who positions experiences as a ‘psychological approach … underlining expectations, events and memories’. Additionally, experiences are subjective constructions where tourism policy makers develop destinations through customised activities that are dynamic and fulfilling [40]. This provides an interacting and participatory approach that is akin to the characteristics of the neo/post-Fordism tourists [45]. Thus, the nucleus point of experience is to create transferable memories in terms of remembering the destination favourably [38].

D’Urso et al. (2016: 298) [47] argued that current production parameters deal with consumers who ‘enjoy multiple experiences embracing different, sometimes contrasting, life values’. Consumers’ characteristics in tourism have been described according to the post-Fordist and neo-Fordist spectrum [48], with consumers becoming the new (neo) tourists as defined by Poon (1993) [49]. Tourists are critical, experienced and educated, looking for immersive and active tourism experiences [50]. MacCannell’s [23,51] argument around authenticity is related to the new way of tourism consumption, with authenticity setting the first barrier to mass tourism, referring to living the reality and being engaged in authentic tourism activities. Other researchers have drawn attention to the importance of sustainable tourism, underpinning the concept of ethical tourism production and consumption as an important priority in tourism development [52]. The alteration in tourism behaviour towards a more ‘tangible’ tourism experience has had a great impact on the tourism package. The next section considers the Fordist paradigm in tourism.

In considering the evolution of tourists’ behaviour, scholars have borrowed the concept of the Fordist spectrum of production and consumption, adapting it to the tourism industry [37,53,54,55,56]). Fordist tourists are mass tourists [49,57,58,59,60] who are described as people looking for the same tourism activities in popular destinations [61]. In particular, the Fordist era instigates:

In contrast, the realm of post-Fordism refers to a transition and a transfer to a new period, which is characterised by high involvement of technological advances and the creation of customised goods and services that focus on human needs [53,62]. Post-Fordism is characterised by a trend of differentiation and a focus on specific markets that converge to the same human preference to move away from mass amorphous production [61,63]. Changing human needs and the new era of ‘post-modernism’ or ‘post-Fordism’, and many other buzzwords with the addition of the prefixes ‘post’ [5,63,64] depict the reform that characterises the transition of a new pace of life and a new dimension of influence of the contemporary world that declares ‘the emerging age of new capitalism’ (Amin 1994: 1) [64]. This is further elaborated by Piore and Charles (1984: 206) [65] argument that the new pace of production has an enterprising ‘flexible specialisation’ in the sense that there is still specialisation in certain products and goods, but the emergence of flexibility in production is referred to as tailor-made to ‘meet the needs of particular consumer groups’. Neo-Fordism provides a slight focus on ‘individualization’ with each consumer to have specific needs that lead to flexible specialization, niche market segmentation and mass customization [56]. However, there is no essential difference among neo- and post-Fordism, and for the purpose of this paper the terms are used interchangeably. Table 1 illustrates the main changes of society under the Fordist classification, and the way tourism is evolving.

Thus, the difference between the transformation period and past economic approaches is the alteration in the fragmentation of the business management behaviour, with new strategies, driven by contemporary technological forces that are adjustable and focus on specific market segments, satisfying specific human needs [66]. The new age of the ‘neo/post’ prefixes are extended to all aspects of the economic and social domain by revealing an alteration in production and consumption patterns to include the diffusion of information and the enriched perceptions and preferences of the consumers, ‘including aesthetics, art, leisure, recreation and pleasure’ (Amin 1994: 2) [65]. In tourism, the neo/post-Fordisms coexist and reveal the need for individual consumption of tourism. Travellers are looking for authentic activities associated with culture and nature as core parameters of a destination authenticity that characterised postmodern society [67]. Additionally, cultural characteristics consist of a priority in the strand of neo/post Fordism examination of their preferences (Everett 2019 [68]), along with the seeking of nature-related tourism and activities that are niche and individualised. The journey of contemporary travellers is characterised as digital, where all information is retrieved online [69].

Information is diffused and business transactions are completed via ICT [7]. ICT adequately fulfils the needs of the neo/post-Fordist tourists because they can basically tailor their holidays and compose travel itineraries on their own [8]. The main challenge is for travel websites to provide this facility, with the most important aspect being the way destinations are promoted in order to attract the interests of travellers. Web communication is an easy and fast way of reaching potential travellers, thus the content must be attractive to catch their interest that will leading in booking their holidays in the destination. Additionally, proffering online information for particular destinations and activities, travellers take the role of the producer with the development of their customised travel itineraries [67]. This is the first study that considers the content of the European tourism websites and examine the content based on neo/post-Fordism tourists characteristics. In particular, studies on website examinations are using more technical methods to identify optimization tools [70]. Other studies concentrate on website evaluation of tourism suppliers (airlines, car rentals) to increase sales [71]. There are also studies that examine the content of regional and national tourism websites in relation to authenticity [72,73]. The next section considers tourism in the EU28.