This paper examines a newly created approach to exploring travel motivations, the Travel Career
Patterns (TCP) model. Through an analysis of the TCP model, the authors advance travel
motivation theory by making three contributions: a refinement of the definition of travel experience;
the use and evaluation of essays as a qualitative tool for interpreting travel motives; and an
extension of the TCP model to a new setting. The first contribution is made by defining travel
experience as a function of general experience with a de-emphasis on the use of age as a predictor
of tourist experience. As part of the second contribution, essays are used to provide an insightful
and emic understanding of travel motives through descriptions of a perfect day at a destination. It
is demonstrated that such descriptions can effectively replicate results from quantitative approaches.
The third contribution is made by extending the TCP model to the study of the motivations of
study-abroad university students. These contributions improve the TCP model in light of the
following elements of a sound theory of tourist motivation: ease of communication, ability to
measure travel motivation, and employment of a dynamic approach. Contextual recommendations
for future research include further TCP studies with small tourist groups, studies of eccentric
tourist groups, and studies of complex, higher order motives such as self-actualisation and the
‘flow’ state. Methodological recommendations arising from this paper encompass the application of
projective techniques to study motives using TCP and the use of software for qualitative analyses.