Are small travel agencies ready for digital marketing? Views of travel agency managers

Digital technology provides new communication and distribution channel for both consumers and suppliers of travel services. Internet enables the travel agencies to adopt digital marketing to attract, inform and serve the travellers. However, in developing countries, the adoption of internet and digital marketing is slow. This study therefore finds it imperative to explore the triggering factors and perceived challenges of digital marketing by travel agencies - an entity whose perspectives do not find much place in the published academic literature. The qualitative study reveals the popular and trusted digital platforms used by the travel agencies. It also presents the factors that inhibit or assist the use of digital marketing by travel service managers.     

Exploring tourists’ stress and coping strategies in leisure travel

Leisure travel can mediate daily stress, but also provoke stress. Tourists experience multiple stress during their vacations. The aim of this study was to identify what types of stress tourists encounter during their travel experiences and what strategies they use to cope with stress. Using semi-structured interviews and participant observation, the study findings reveal that tourists encounter four major types of stress (i.e., service-provider-related stress, traveler-related stress, travel-partner-related stress, and environment-related stress) during their vacations and use many strategies (i.e., problem-focused and emotion-focused coping) to cope with stress. These findings not only contribute to tourism research by documenting specific types of stress in the travel context and exploring new insights into ways of coping with stress, but also provide suggestions for how tourism and hospitality professionals should modify programs/experiences in response to tourists’ stress and the need to cope with stress during travel experiences.     

Why do people purchase from online travel agencies (OTAs)? A consumption values perspective

Online travel agencies (OTAs) are struggling to remain financially sustainable due to intense competition. To overcome this challenge, OTAs need to better engage their customers by offering them superior value propositions. This calls for an in-depth understanding of the consumption values pertinent to the OTA context. To address this gap, the current study puts forward a framework for predicting purchase intention by adapting the theory of consumption values to the OTA context. The proposed model is tested with data collected from 809 OTA users. The results imply that quality-of-benefits, monetary, social status, preference, and information values predict purchase intention toward OTAs, with the chief driver being the quality-of-benefits value, followed by the preference value. Moderation analysis further reveals that the strength of the relationship between these values and purchase intention differs between users in different age groups and between users with different levels of privacy and security concerns, hygiene consciousness, and visibility perceptions.     

European travel — the way ahead

Europe currently holds the primary position in the global travel market, but with the trend for long-haul travel increasing and the saturation of prime destinations and peak seasons, the intra-European market may well stagnate. Europe must compete with ever more successful non-European tourist destinations by developing more varied products which take advantage of shoulder seasons and less crowded destinations. Aggressive marketing within the USA, aimed at those segments of the population most likely to be attracted to Europe, may well offer the best chance for Europe to increase its share of the world tourism market.     

A creative-mix or variety-mix fusion experience? Examining marketing strategies for ethnic fusion restaurants

According to the National Restaurant Association, ethnic fusion cuisine is identified as a top food trend for the next decade. To that end, it is important for hospitality researchers and practitioners to understand consumer behavior in this fast-growing sector and derive appropriate marketing strategies for fusion restaurant brands. The present research examines the joint effects of fusion type (creative-mix vs. variety-mix), restaurant price tier (high vs. low), and cuisine compatibility (high vs. low) on consumers’ judgments and decision-making processes. The results show that ethnic fusion restaurants in the higher-price tier will generate higher levels of perceived chef expertise and visit intention through the creative-mix strategy, regardless of cuisine compatibility. However, ethnic fusion restaurants in the lower-price tier will generate higher levels of perceived chef expertise and visit intention through the variety-mix strategy only when cuisine compatibility is high. Implications for marketing ethnic fusion restaurants are discussed.     

What kind of marketing distribution mix can maximize revenues: The wholesaler travel agencies' perspective?

This study attempts to identify the variety of marketing channel efficiencies for marketing activities and sets up an optimal marketing distribution mix when using different distribution channels for wholesaler travel agencies. This research examines 12 large-scale travel agencies in Taiwan and offers seven direct and indirect distribution channels in order to establish an optimal marketing distribution mix and identifies the different forms of distribution involved. We also implement the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) to prioritize the seven main marketing distribution channels of travel agency: websites, cable TV, radios, professional magazines, retailer travel agencies, strategic alliances, and newspapers. Five criteria are categorized as a distribution channel selection: overall cost of the channel, target audience respondent rate, impression rates, transactional capabilities, and gross profit of the channel. The results show that Taiwan's wholesaler travel agencies adopt the retailer travel agency as their highest priority of channel selection, while travel agency websites hold it as their second priority. Transactional capabilities, gross profit of the channel, and overall cost of the channel are the top three favorable choices among the five criteria considered. This study proposes an innovative hierarchy model of marketing distribution mix to a wholesaler travel agency practitioner when making decisions in order to effectively exploit the different distribution mix, to maximize performances and revenues, and to overcome the traditional experience based on the shortcomings of the selection.     

From travel to tourism — visions and utopias

Man has been on the move since the beginning of his existence. Gradually different forms of transport were developed and greater distances travelled until most parts of the globe became accessible. The invention of the printing press enabled images of the world to be disseminated among people unlikely to experience travel at first hand. Information systems have developed to supply instant images anywhere, and travel and transport technologies enable man to explore outer space.     

Traveling to your match? Assessing the predictive potential of Plog’s travel personality in destination marketing

This study revisits .Plog’s travel personality model in a true experimental setting and tests the model’s predictive power. The specific aim is to examine whether attitudinal and behavioral responses toward a destination vary as a function of the congruity between the tourist’s travel personality and the characteristics of the destination as perceived from an advertising message. The concept of self-congruity serves as a foundation for the theoretical framework. Results indicate message-personality congruity had a significant influence on visit intention via attitudes as mediators. This study provides theoretical implications for the predictive potential of Plog’s model as well as strategic marketing implications for destinations.     

US international pleasure travel market — a values perspective

The values and lifestyles (VALS) technique for market segmentation is applied to the population of the USA. Of nine different types isolated, three are found to account for the bulk of international pleasure travellers - ‘achievers’, the ‘societally conscious’ and ‘belongers’. Research demonstrates that these three groups have quite different travel motives and goals. The US travel market is thus more highly differentiated than previously imagined. VALS could therefore be a useful technique enabling the industry to define and target potential market segments.     

The role of travel agents’ ethical concerns when brokering information in the marketing and sale of sustainable tourism

ABSTRACT

Using conservation tourism as a test case, this study explores the role high-end travel agents play in selling sustainable tourism. It examines a niche marketing activity in that process. The study focuses on agents’ consideration of ethics as they act as information brokers between tourists and operators. Data were collected from interviews with agents and analysed using a deductive content analysis based on six overarching concepts and theories on ethical decision-making. The findings emphasize the implicit influence within conservation tourism of tourism's ethical dimensions, whilst identifying many constraints that prevent a full consideration and/or disclosure of ethical concerns in the sales process. Most importantly, agents made assumptions using a false consensus bias about clients' preferences for service over concerns for the environment, and were not prepared to discuss the more sensitive issues surrounding conservation with their clients. A number of recommendations are proposed regarding the need to unpack conservation information, overcome the false consensus bias, and agents’ reluctance to discuss ethics in the sales process. Finally, the findings have broader implications for the development of sustainable tourism, which ultimately will depend on a dialogue of ethical concerns and values within the tourism supply chain between suppliers, brokers and tourists.     

The new tourist — turning point for leisure and travel

People are motivated to travel by the desire to escape from the monotony of the daily routine, and the actual destination is to some extent irrelevant. Jost Krippendorf, of the University of Bern Tourism Research Institute, explains why he believes that present changes of attitudes towards work and leisure will eventually produce a new type of tourist having more consideration for, and a more informed understanding of, the host population and environment.     

Tourism in the 1990s — UK government view

Various developments and improvements are expected in the UK tourism industry over the next decade. The UK government would like to see the image of the tourism industry change to reflect the industry's significant contribution to the economy. Greater investment and more appropriate education and careers advice should aid the emergence of a flexible and effective tourism industry by the mid 1990s.     

Women's leisure time — using time budget data to examine current trends and future predictions

This paper draws on the findings from 551 interviews among 16–20-year-olds from high unemployment areas in Liverpool, London, Manchester and Wolverhampton. It argues that theories about responses to unemployment, derived from the experiences of earlier generations, cannot be reconciled with the behaviour and attitudes of contemporary youth. To make sense of current developments, and in particular to understand the relevance of recreation in an age of rising youth unemployment, the authors insist that we need to reappraise work and leisure, and recognize the qualitative as well as quantitative aspects of the changes in process.     

Social learning? Conformity? Or comparison? — An empirical study on the impact of peer effects on Chinese seniors' intention to purchase travel insurance

This study aims to explore seniors' consumption behavior characteristics and the impact of peer effects on their intention to purchase travel insurance. The multiple regression analysis of logistic binary categorical variables revealed that peer effects influence seniors' intention to purchase travel insurance through social learning, conformity, and comparisons. Other factors (e.g., spending power, education, and perceived risk) affect such intentions; however, we can control these. We categorized the senior travel-insurance market and pioneered the introduction of peer-effect theory into research. Overall, this study (i) promotes more specialized research into travel-insurance marketing theory; (ii) results in reduced marketing expenditures for this demographic; (iii) result in better targeting/promotion; and (iv) realizes multiplier effects in this domain.