The decision-making process of and the decisive factors in accommodation choice

This study examines tourists’ decision-making process of and highlights the decisive factors in accommodation choice, employing the discrete choice (multinomial logit and nested logit) models and using the international tourist data of Taiwan. The results of this study may be indicative of the hierarchical nature of tourists’ decision-making process of accommodation choice. In addition, we find that price is a significant factor in accommodation choice, whereas income has only limited explanatory power. The results also indicate that tourists with a longer length of stay tend to choose hotels of lower quality, and, in contrast, elder people prefer better accommodations.     

Assessing preferences for mega sports event travel products: a choice experimental approach

Hosting mega sports events spreads positive destination images and generates massive tourism arrivals for the host communities. It is, therefore, important for tourism businesses to better understand what types of travel products, tailored for particular mega sports events, are purchased by sport tourists. Using a choice experimental approach, this study aims to examine how sport tourists formulate their preferences for travel products customized for the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympic Games by making intricate trade-offs among various product attributes. We utilize a gender perspective to further understand the preference dynamics embedded in segmented sport tourism markets. Study results suggest that sport tourists put distinctive weights on each of the attributes comprising the Olympic travel products. Gender differences are also identified in sport tourists’ choice decisions for sports event travel products. Based on the study findings, this paper proposes several marketing strategies to meet the needs of targeted market segments.     

Travelling ‘green’: is tourists' happiness at stake?

Several western governments have implemented environmental policies which increase the cost of air travel. Such policies aim to reduce the impact of air travel on climate change, but at the same time they restrict tourists in their travels. This study examines the extent to which the average tourist's happiness is affected by ‘involuntary green travel’, defined as reduced CO₂ emission travel imposed by government regulations. This issue was addressed in a study among 588 Dutch citizens who completed a self-report questionnaire containing questions about their happiness. The strongest determinant of tourists' happiness is freedom in choosing a destination. Any policy measure that interferes with tourists' freedom in destination choice will negatively affect tourists' happiness. Six percent of their happiness is at stake and potentially 17% of all holiday trips are affected. The number of tourists involved is possibly much smaller. The best options for governments are to impose taxes on long-haul destinations, which affect only a small share of all tourists, and air routes which can also be travelled by a variety of alternative modes of transport and thus less limiting to destination choice within this market segment.     

Determinants of collective transport mode choice and its impacts on trip satisfaction in urban tourism

The continuous growth of tourism has important environmental impacts and transports account for a large proportion of the CO₂ emissions generated by tourists. Understanding the motivations and characteristics of collective transport users in contemporary cities may contribute to promote more sustainable forms of tourism. Based on an extensive questionnaire to international tourists in Barcelona, this study employs a multinomial logistic regression to explore the links among visitors' characteristics, motivations, and means of transportation, while an ordinal logistic regression is applied to investigate whether the preference for collective transport has an impact on the satisfaction with the trip. The novelty of our approach is testing the hypothesis that the choice of collective transports is more related to trip motivations (professional, leisure, or personal) than to socio-demographic or personal characteristics of tourists. The results show that professional travelers are more oriented to the use of private cars, but they prefer collective transports when the length of stay is higher and combined with other trip motivations. Also, using collective transports is linked to high satisfaction with the visit for the tourists using this form of transportation. This study puts forward policy implications and suggestions for future research directions, in particular regarding the utilization of non-motorized forms of transportation cities.     

Adventure tourist destination choice in Tanzania

It is said an adventure is an experience and experience is a part of expectations. Yet as adventure tourists expect unique experiences, certain ingredients of services (degree of satisfaction) affect their deeper needs to become attached to a place. Are such needs developed over time at a new destination? This paper suggests tourist behaviours and preferences towards destination choice change over time. The proposed model suggests that tourists’ expectations and motivation at early stages of planning affect satisfaction and level of perceived constraints, and these further predict place identity and dependence at the end of travel. As much as satisfaction arises from concrete services such as food and transportation services, constrained activities are expected to have a negativeconsequence on expectations and motivations. Since this paper is based on international adventure tourists, typically willing to take on calculated risks during their visits to Tanzania, we expect many of these hypothesised gaps to diminish as tourists become mature and aware of services offered at the destination. To test awareness and familiarity, we add different proxies for maturity (i.e. late stage of stay, repeat visitors and loyalty intentions) and awareness (i.e. tourists with escape motives) of services provided at the specific destination.     

You never know what you will get in an Airbnb: poor communication destroys value for guests

ABSTRACT

This study explores the antecedents of value co-destruction in the context of a new form of accommodation, Airbnb. Data were gathered using semi-structured interviews from people who had stayed in Airbnb accommodations during the previous 12 months. A total of 21 interviews were conducted, of people representing five nationalities. Using the grounded theory approach, the findings indicate that poor communication between the guest and host was one of the main reasons contributing to value co-destruction during the Airbnb accommodation experience. From the guest perspective, value co-destruction due to poor communication resulted in unexpected resource losses, including time and money. One interviewee also regretted the lost experience. Although the majority of the interviewees did not have negative Airbnb accommodation experiences, some did not experience a reciprocal and mutually beneficial relationship.     

Negotiating stigmatisation of deviant behaviour: an exploration of locals’ perceptions of nude tourists

ABSTRACT

Stigma may result in tense social interactions and discrimination between stigmatisers and stigmatised individuals. Despite its social relevance, stigma has been largely neglected in tourism sociocultural studies. Framed by Goffman’s and Falk’s theoretical propositions of social stigma, this paper aimed to explore local’s stigmatisation of tourists’ behaviour. This study revealed that locals’ stigmatisation of tourists’ behaviours can be spatially negotiated and deconstructed through social interactions. The data analysis also found that not all tourists are equally stigmatised and that tourists’ conduct can be highly stigmatised if adopted by locals. Based on in-depth interviews, these findings were drawn from an examination of locals’ perceptions of tourists’ nudist behaviours in a Mexican destination. This research’s results contribute to a fuller understanding of how locals (de)construct their stigmas of tourists’ behaviours through local-tourist sociocultural interactions.     

‘We make more money now,but we don’t talk to each other anymore’: on new tourism and capitalism in the Danube Delta

ABSTRACT

In 1991, the Danube Delta (Romania), famous for its biodiversity, became a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve. Tourists have been a constant presence in this area for more than 50 years, being accommodated exclusively, informally, in the local fishing households. Relying on extended participant observation and semi-structured interviews as the main research methods, this study presents how locals from a fishing village relate to tourism and how this process leaves a significant imprint on their social organization, use of natural resources, household economy, norms and values. Exposed to new ideas, opportunities and challenges brought in by tourism, locals are not being swept away, as many of the studies in anthropology of fishing and tourism suggest, but rather act like ‘individuals with agency’, actually empowered by tourism; local fishing and women’s traditional role as ‘the manager of the household’ are reinforced by tourists’ demands for ‘home-cooked fish dish’ and local accommodation. On the other hand, the new tourism has launched local families into a constant competition for natural resources, eroding social cohesion while leading to a commodification of family relationships.     

Embedded and exposed: exploring the lived experiences of African American tourists

ABSTRACT

The United States is experiencing a shift in racial demographics. Recent projections suggest that minority groups will make up over 40% of the country’s population by 2050. Such increases have made the topics of race, ethnicity, and culture an important area of study for researchers and tourism professionals alike. Existing explanations of differences in African American travel suggest that decisions are made due to marginality or ethnicity. Because travel preferences may be a byproduct of learned behaviors passed down through generations, it is imperative to understand both current and historical aspects of leisure behavior. In this qualitative study, the narratives of 12 African American tourists provided information which suggests that marginality, ethnicity, and issues related to discrimination impact their tourism-related attitudes and behaviors. Capturing the voices of African American travelers offers a more inclusive understanding of their travel experiences and insights into the relationship between race and tourism.     

Accommodating spatial correlation across choice alternatives in discrete choice models: an application to modeling residential location choice behavior

This paper presents a modeling methodology capable of accounting for spatial correlation across choice alternatives in discrete choice modeling applications. Many location choice (e.g., residential location, workplace location, destination location) modeling contexts involve choice sets where alternatives are spatially correlated with one another due to unobserved factors. In the presence of such spatial correlation, traditional discrete choice modeling methods that are often based on the assumption of independence among choice alternatives are not appropriate. In this paper, a Generalized Spatially Correlated Logit (GSCL) model that allows one to represent the degree of spatial correlation as a function of a multi-dimensional vector of attributes characterizing each pair of location choice alternatives is formulated and presented. The formulation of the GSCL model allows one to accommodate alternative correlation mechanisms rather than pre-imposing restrictive correlation assumptions on the location choice alternatives. The model is applied to the analysis of residential location choice behavior using a sample of households drawn from the 2000 San Francisco Bay Area Travel Survey (BATS) data set. Model estimation results obtained from the GSCL are compared against those obtained using the standard multinomial logit (MNL) model and the spatially correlated logit (SCL) model where only correlations across neighboring (or adjacent) alternatives are accommodated. Model findings suggest that there is significant spatial correlation across alternatives that do not share a common boundary, and that the GSCL offers the ability to more accurately capture spatial location choice behavior.     

Destination Attractiveness Drivers among Urban Hostel Tourists: An Analysis of Frustrators and Delighters

This study is based on data from 679 tourists staying at hostel accommodation facilities in Zagreb, a propulsive city‐break destination in Central Europe. Besides providing insight into the socio‐demographic and behavioural characteristics of hostel tourists, this study uncovers determinant destination attributes influencing their perceptions of destination attractiveness. In particular, impact asymmetry analysis identified potential sources of delight and frustration among hostel tourists. Since the hostel tourist segment, as such, is almost completely unconsidered in contemporary tourism research, partly covered only by a few studies on youth travellers and backpackers, the results of this case study are valuable to both practitioners and researchers related to the hostelling industry and city destination marketing organizations. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The implications on willingness to pay of a stochastic treatment of attribute processing in stated choice studies

Individuals processing the information in a stated choice experiment are asked to evaluate a set of attributes offered and to choose their most preferred alternative. It has always been thought that some attributes are not attended to in this process for many reasons, including a coping strategy to handle their perception of the complexity of the choice task. However analysts proceed, with rare exception, to estimate discrete choice models as if all attributes have influenced the outcome to some degree. In this paper we investigate the implications of bounding the attribute processing task by attribute elimination through not attending to one or more attributes. Using a sample of car non-commuters in Sydney we estimate a mixed logit model in which all attributes are assumed to be attended to, and models which assume that certain attribute(s) are not attended to, based on supplementary information provided by respondents. The supplementary information is accounted for in a deterministic and a stochastic way; the latter in recognition of the analyst’s lack of full information on why a specific attribute processing (AP) strategy was adopted by each sampled individual. We compare the value of travel time savings distribution under alternative attribute processing regimes. As expected, there are noticeable variations in the mean and standard deviation willingness to pay (WTP) across the three AP strategies.     

Historical blueprints of tourists’ paths from Poland to the former USSR

ABSTRACT

This article is a contribution to the developing body of research on tourism within the region of the Central and Eastern Europe. Our aim is to explore if and how Polish tourists to the former Soviet Union incorporate a historic past in their imaginaries. Sixty interviews carried out between 2008 and 2012 are analysed in order to establish if there are references to the past in tourist accounts although the fact history was not a major travel motivation. We were also interested in how the past co-creates tourist experiences and destination images. We found out that tourists may question dominant versions of historic memory in their straightforward references to the past. We also discovered that sources of memory are multiple and include not only first-hand memory but also family memory as well as non-representational memory. Some tourists purposefully suppressed the past. We suggest that more attention should be paid to ‘traces’ of the past in tourism imaginaries.     

Backpackers in the Northern Territory of Australia—motives,behaviours and satisfactions

This paper reports the findings of a study of 475 backpackers in the Northern Territory of Australia. It finds that backpackers tend to visit many of the same locations as other tourists, and like those tourists, are attracted to the natural sights of the Territory. It is also found that the backpackers can be divided into various groups. For example, of this sample about one‐third had left their previous career to travel, and about 12% had just completed studies. On the other hand about one‐quarter were holidaying during periods of normal paid holiday leave. It is argued that the market is not solely comprised of ‘life change’ or rite de passage holidaymakers. Additionally, differences are found between national groupings. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Astro-tourism conceptualisation as special-interest tourism (SIT) field: a phenomonological approach

ABSTRACT

This study conceptualises astro-tourism as a nature-based tourism phenomenon and illustrates its positioning as a special-interest tourism (SIT) field using a phenomenological approach. In the process, this baseline research study contributes to this relatively new tourism field’s foundational research aspects, such as developing a definition and, examining its articulation with destination image. It finds that astro-tourism is based on the interest of tourists in sky-related activities such as dark sky observation and astrophotography, most often in a nature-based context. The findings can be utilised to develop astro-tourism as a new medium in conceptualising tourism destination image by combining destination earth features as well as sky features. Targeting sky features of a destination combined with the earth facilities to attract tourists is one of the new opportunities to deliver unique tourism products.     

Going beyond the traditional destination competitiveness – reflections on a smart destination in the current research

ABSTRACT

This paper reviews the literature on tourism destination competitiveness from different aspects, focusing on comparative and competitive advantages. Also, the paper highlights the importance of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in tourism destinations and their increasing impact on the achievement of destination competitiveness. Thanks to the wider application of ICTs in tourism, tourists nowadays are well informed and have access to global market which creates a new dynamic environment by creating a smart demand. Since smartness emphasizes on ICT-based tools, including smartness integration for value co-creation, it can increase and enhance destination competitiveness. In this regard, special emphasis is placed on exploring the core components of smartness and smart tourism destination.     

Understanding the residents’ social impact perceptions of an African Cultural Festival: the case of Macufe

ABSTRACT

The Macufe is one of the Africa’s largest cultural festivals, and takes place annually in Bloemfontein, South Africa. This 10-day event attracts approximately 140,000 attendees, meaning that the residents have to share facilities and services with tourists. The effects of such interactions can be both positive and negative. Community members are stakeholders in any tourism ventures that take place in their area, meaning that their goodwill is of utmost importance. Therefore, the social impacts of this event should be well managed to foster community support. For this reason, a quantitative study was done to determine residents’ social impact perceptions towards the event. A total of 425 questionnaires were completed by willing residents who lived in proximity to festival activities. From an exploratory factor analysis, four factors were extracted, namely community enhancement, community degradation, tourism growth and increased public spending and interaction. It was found that the event does not generate significant levels of positive social impacts, and that the negative social impacts are viewed almost equal to the positive social impacts. This was one of the first social impact perception studies done on an African arts festival, which contributes to the sustainable management of such crucial events.     

Investigating the effects of a shared bike for tourism use on the tourist experience and its consequences

ABSTRACT

As public bike-sharing systems have been widely set up in cities around the world, a shared bike for tourism use can enhance tourists’ experience at destinations and lead to tourists’ post-visit evaluations. Thus, this research explores the attributional effects of the value of using shared bikes (namely, instrumental value and affective value) on tourists’ emotional experience (namely, hedonics and perceived uniqueness) as well as on satisfaction and destination loyalty. We obtain a sample of 302 tourists using shared bikes as transport modes during their visits to examine the proposed relationship model. Results show that both instrumental and affective values of shared bike use positively relate to hedonics and perceived uniqueness experiences. While both hedonics and perceived uniqueness have positive effects on satisfaction, only perceived uniqueness shows a positive effect on destination loyalty. The findings of multi-group analyses indicate that the direct effects of the tourism experience on destination loyalty are significantly positive for the low-motivation group but not for the high-motivation group. Empirical implications and recommendations for future research are also discussed herein.     

Route choice of bike share users: Leveraging GPS data to derive choice sets

To identify the determinants of bike share users' route choices, this research collects 132,397 hub-to-hub global positioning system (GPS) trajectories over a 12-month period between April 1, 2015 and March 31, 2016 from 750 bicycles provided by Hamilton Bike Share (HBS). A GIS-based map-matching algorithm is used to derive users' routes along the cycling network within Hamilton, Ontario and generate multiple attributes for each route, such as route distance, route directness, average distance between intersections, and the number of turns, intersections, and unique road segments. Concerning route choice analysis, the origin and destination pair should be the same for all routes within a choice set, thus HBS users' trips are grouped by origin-destination hub pairs. Since trips taken by different users between a hub pair can follow the same route, unique routes are extracted using a link signature extraction tool. Following this, a normalized Gini (G_n) coefficient is calculated for each hub pair to evaluate users' preferences among all the unique hub-to-hub route choices. A G_n closer to 0 indicates that routes between a hub pair are more evenly used, while a value closer to 1 implies a higher preference toward one dominant route. Three route choice models, a global model, a medium G_n model, and a high G_n model, are estimated using Path-Size Logit to determine how route choice is affected by the presence of dominant routes. These models suggest that HBS users are willing to detour for some attributes, such as bicycle facilities, but tend to avoid circuitous routes, turns, steep slopes, and roads with high traffic volume.