When Motivation Misses the Heritage Tourist: Uncovering Hidden Cultural Engagement and Its Economic Value

Cultural tourism is usually identified from travellers’ primary motive, yet what visitors actually do at the destination may reveal a broader heritage market. Using a hypothetico-deductive design, this study examines 3,551 trip records from the March 2026 public-use file of Spain’s Encuesta de Turismo de Residentes (ETR/FAMILITUR), applying official survey weights. Cultural engagement is derived from reported cultural visits, performances, and other cultural activities. Among culturally engaged travellers, 56.4% did not report culture as their primary motive (bootstrap 95% CI: 52.5–60.5%), and agreement between motive- and engagement-based classifications was only moderate (κ = 0.459). Multiple correspondence analysis and weighted latent class analysis support a four-class solution (BIC = 36,486.13; entropy = 0.832). The Urban-Cultural Explorers class accounts for 21.2% of weighted trips, although only 46.1% of its members report a cultural primary motive. In adjusted models, cultural engagement is associated with approximately 14.0% higher total expenditure (p < 0.001), whereas stated cultural motivation is not significant. Engagement also performs better in information-criterion comparisons and repeated cross-validation. No significant satisfaction effect is detected; cultural engagement is associated with lower previous visitation, and hidden heritage tourists exhibit a distinct multivariate trip profile. Overall, the results reveal a measurable motivation–engagement gap with implications for heritage-market sizing, segmentation, and economic-value assessment.