Analysis of Korean millennials’ travel expenditure patterns: an almost ideal demand system approach

ABSTRACT

Generational cohorts can differ in their consumption patterns and preferred travel behavior. As the millennial generation represents an important economic force and influences new consumption trends, this study utilizes nationwide data and almost ideal demand system (AIDS) approach to examine expenditure patterns of Korean travelers during holidays. In this process, the joint effects of travel-related characteristics are also examined. The results of the AIDS estimation on data from 871 domestic travelers reveal significantly different travel expenditure patterns for cohorts. The findings contribute to furthering the understanding of how different generational cohorts allocate their travel budgets to respective travel expenditure categories.     

Travel,tourism, climate change,and behavioral change: travelers’ perspectives from a developing country,Nigeria

While studies have examined people's understanding of climate change and its relationship to tourism, these focus largely on developed country populations. Much future tourism growth will come from developing countries following economic development; often countries where climate change will be strongly felt. Do tourists from developing countries have the same knowledge gaps about travel, tourism, and climate change as in the developed world? Will behavioral change policies be successful in encouraging more environmentally friendly approaches to climate change and tourism in developing countries? This paper presents findings from 20 in-depth interviews with active Nigerian tourists, analyzing their understanding of climate change, the links known, or not, between their travel and climate change, and their willingness to change their tourism patterns. Understanding of climate change was limited and there was conceptual confusion. Participants did not view their own travel as a cause of climate change and many were embedded in air travel practice. Participants were unwilling to change their tourism patterns to reduce their contribution to climate change. Significant structural barriers limit low carbon tourism travel in Nigeria (and other developing countries), including reliability, availability safety, and speed. Behavioral change will be difficult to achieve.     

都市区旅行社空间布局特征与销售等级差异——以重庆旅游百事通为例

在旅游供给研究中,重视在线旅行社发展的同时,不应忽略传统旅行社在地理实体空间的布局特征及其变化趋势。目前,对中微观尺度的都市区传统旅行社的空间布局研究相对薄弱,实证研究尤为缺乏。文章以旅游百事通在重庆主城区的195家零售门店为例,从都市区的中微观空间尺度分析了旅行社零售门店的空间集聚和空间关联特征,比较了商圈、社区和临街等不同分布类型的门店销售等级差异。结果表明:(1)旅行社门店呈现出较明显向城市商圈、交通设施和大型社区集聚的特征;(2)在城市内部,旅行社与其他城市生活服务业呈现出消费者主导型、商品主导型、竞争性关联和互助性关联等多种类型的空间关联关系;(3)商圈与非商圈门店、临街与写字楼门店的销售等级存在显著差异;社区与非社区门店、干道与非干道门店的销售等级差异均不明显。     

A voyage from religiousness to secularity and back: a glimpse into ‘Haredi’ tourists

Ultra-orthodox Jews (known as ‘Haredim’) in Israel are increasing their travel demands and their use of existing tourism infrastructure in Israel more than ever before. This exploratory study investigates the question of whether the travel behavior of this group is a reflection of religious tourism or, rather, the tourist behavior of a unique group of religious tourists. Data were collected through three focus groups and face-to-face interviews with some participants of the focus groups. The findings show that the main motivators and determinants of the Haredi travel behavior stem from their daily routine and ultra-religious lifestyle. The study also revealed that minimal, experienced and expected travel attributes are differentiated according to their mode of travel – either as families or as couples.     

Important attributes of lodgings to gain repeat business: A comparison between individual travels and group travels

The purpose of this study is to investigate the attributes of the satisfaction that are related to the lodging-guests’ tendency to revisit the lodgings and to compare these attributes among the different travel styles, such as individual travel, travel with friends or as a couple, and travel with family. We examine 6351 guest evaluations from a highly popular travel reservations website. Multinomial logistic regression analyses are performed and they show that the important attributes for lodgings to gain repeat business vary among their guest's travel styles.     

Impact of exchange rates on air travel

The impact on the travel and tourism industry of changes in exchange rates has not obtained the same level of interest as that enjoyed by manufacturing. However, U.S. tourism competes with the world economy for travelers in the same way that the automobile manufacturers must. Increases in the value of the dollar make foreign travel more attractive to U.S. citizens and U.S. travel less attractive to foreigners. This paper provides some estimates of the impact on air travel of changes in the U.S. rate of exchange for 22 countries. The findings are that exchange rates have been important in nearly all cases, with most demand elasticities ranging between 1.0 and 1.5. Estimated demand elasticities can be used to estimate the impact on net air travel of percentage changes in exchange rates.     

Managing business travel: Developments and dilemmas in corporate travel management

Work organizations today often depend on communication and interaction between persons working in geographically dispersed locations. As a consequence, business travel has increased considerably over the past few decades, and large companies and public authorities often employ travel managers to implement efficient travel routines. The present paper investigates the professional practice of travel management. Using interviews, policy documents and existing literature, it examines recent developments in this field and identifies a number of dilemmas and challenges that travel managers experience in their attempts to control travel behaviour and travel costs in their organizations. These dilemmas occur in travel managers’ relations with other stakeholders in the business travel process - travellers, senior managers, suppliers, and travel agents. An additional dilemma concerns the role of ‘virtual meetings’ (via telephone, video or the Web) and their potential to serve as substitutes for or complements to travel and face-to-face meetings.     

Competing priorities as constraints in event travel careers

An event travel career is a potentially lifelong pattern of travel to events linked with an individual’s preferred leisure activity. This paper applies the concept of an event travel career to non-elite triathletes. For these active sport tourists, ongoing pursuit of an event travel career is arguably constrained by competing priorities that intervene between everyday life and their pursuit of an event travel career. In-depth interviews were conducted with 21 triathletes identified as pursuing an event travel career. Interpretive analysis revealed seven domains of competing priorities that could work to constrain their event travel career aspirations. These domains included familial relationships, domestic responsibilities, sociability, finances, leisure, wellbeing, and work/education. The seven competing priority domains were interrelated, and cyclical in their constraining effects. Data assisted in clarifying some defining characteristics of the event travel career concept, and challenged notions of leisure participation as entirely positive and fulfilling.     

Social Media as a New Play in a Marketing Channel Strategy: Evidence from Taiwan Travel Agencies' Blogs

With social media playing an increasingly important role in marketing strategies for travel agencies, this study explores travel agencies that develop their own travel blogs as a marketing channel in order to differentiate their products or services and their strategic performances. The paper herein adopts a two-stage research design, with the first stage developing a three-round Delphi research. According to this research, Taiwanese travel agencies consider four external environment forces, five internal motivations for investment, four developing differentiated strategies, and four channel performance measurement indicators for managing travel agencies' own blogs as a marketing channel. The second stage explores a quantitative survey, Structural Equation Modeling, with the structural equation testing the business model of a travel blog marketing channel strategy. Finally, the findings provide innovative approaches for effectively exploiting differentiated marketing channel strategies when targeting maximum profits.     

Travel risk dimensions,personal-related factors,and intention to visit a destination: a study of young educated German adults

The study examines travel risk dimensions and their relationships with tourist role, past visit experience, gender and intention to visit Thailand among young educated German adults. Using an online survey of 323 German university students, six dimensions of travel risk perception and their relationships with tourist role and past travel experience were revealed. Over-commercialisation risk was found to be the most concerned risk and produce different relationships with tourist role and travel experience from other types of risks. Although political risk was of least concern, it was confirmed as the only risk having a negative influence on travel intention.     

Tourists' Perception of International Air Travel's Impact on the Global Climate and Potential Climate Change Policies

Tourism's increasing contribution to climate change, especially through the use of air travel, is now acknowledged. This study seeks to explore tourists' knowledge and awareness of aviation's impact on the climate, their sense of personal responsibility and their reactions to specific climate change policies. A focus group approach – informed by interviews with international tourists leaving New Zealand – was chosen to involve tourists in discussing climate change and travel. In the focus groups, three policy options were discussed: voluntary initiatives, a global air travel charge and a per capita carbon budget. The global air travel tax emerged as a realistic compromise between restricting travel and achieving emissions reduction. When discussing individual responsibility for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, tourists distinguished between their travel and their everyday life, where responsibility for mitigation was perceived to be greater. The value of freedom to travel is firmly established in the minds of many tourists and limiting travel is considered unacceptable by the (hyper) mobile tourists who participated in this research. Only major societal changes to bring about behavioural change seem likely to reduce air travel's contribution to climate change.     

Impacts of COVID-19 on global tourism industry: A cross-regional comparison

The tourism industry was one of the world's greatest markets; until the world met a pandemic in the 21st century, COVID-19. This study aims to present the reactions of travelers during the pandemic trends outlined by adopting text mining techniques. Between December 30, 2019–March 15, 2020, approximately 75,000 comments are retrieved from the TripAdvisor forums, and 23,515 cases from the US, Europe, and Asia forums are employed for analyses.The results reveal that the tourism sector is easily affected by global crises. It is almost the same day that travelers decide to cancel or delay their trips, with the spread of the news. More in-depth analyses uncovered several topics consisted of comments on benefiting from travel insurance and refund due to the travel cancellations. Travel insurance has become a hot topic, which may be a way of reanimating the industry by offering travel packages, including travel insurance services.     

Sustainable travel writing? Exploring the ethical dilemmas of twenty-first-century travel writers

There is a paucity of academic literature on travel writing that examines travel writers and their perceived influence on sustainability. This article addresses this lacuna by exploring how travel writers understand their responsibilities and reflects on ethics in their profession, particularly in how foreign destinations and cultures are portrayed. This is significant because some travel writers have been accused of contributing to what interviewees called the “Lonely Planet Syndrome”, the notion that writing about a place will introduce and encourage mass tourism, changing the original state of the place for the worse. In this qualitative, phenomenological study, data were collected from 23 in-depth interviews with twenty-first-century travel writers and analysed using an Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis. Findings suggest that while some interviewees expressed anxiety about their perceived accountability to mediate foreign cultures responsibly, others embraced their role as a cultural mediator. They cared about local cultures and wanted to write in responsible ways by supporting more sustainable outcomes, reflected in the themes of cross-cultural understanding, socio-cultural and environmental advocacy and promoting benefits of tourism to communities. Future studies could include exploring the role of travel editors, travel writers’ professional knowledge and the growing role of travel blogs.     

Targeting Rural Tourists in the Internet: Comparing Travel Motivation and Activity-Based Segments

This study aims to compare activity-based segmentation and travel motivation segmentation from the perspective of information search behavior and online use behavior by comparing segment heterogeneity. The data were collected from users of three Finnish rural tourism websites with 1754 completed and usable questionnaires to create segmentation solutions based on travel activities and motivations using hierarchical cluster analysis and then comparing the results. The results indicate that travel activities are more useful than travel motivations in finding heterogeneous segmentation solutions, making the travel activity segments more heterogeneous than travel motivation segments as regards their information search behavior and Internet use. The results suggest that in this era of Internet marketing, travel activities are a better segmentation base than travel motivations in order to target different market segments as activities form more heterogeneous segmentation solutions.     

Travel writers and the nature of self: Essentialism,transformation and (online) construction

A lacuna of academic research exists that explores contemporary travel writers’ lived experience, particularly how they perceive their s​ense of self through their work as a forum for self-discovery and self-transformation. Using the essentialist self and socially constructed selves as theoretical frameworks, this research extends the concept of multiple selves to these writers and new forms of online media. Qualitative interviews were conducted with 47 travel writers and data were analysed using an Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis. Findings suggest that many travel writers (co)construct an online self and use their writing to transform themselves. The cathartic process of writing, interaction with their readership and the importance of establishing a social identity online emerged as influences on the nature of self.     

Travel motivation for Taiwanese hearing-impaired backpackers

Why do hearing-impaired people desire to undertake outbound travel as backpackers despite their hearing and speaking limitations? To investigate the reasons, this study applied the push and pull model of travel motivation as the framework. A total of 30 hearing-impaired backpackers participated in face-to-face interviews and responded to questions concerning their motivation to travel overseas. The results of this study reveal many unique motivation themes in the push and pull groups; specifically, five push themes (constraints of group tours, self-challenge, independence, different experience, and invitation by hearing-impaired friends) and two pull themes (enjoy local culture and lifestyle and the “I have been there” feeling) were identified. Furthermore, the participants’ desire to travel as backpackers is based on their previous negative experiences in group tours. Moreover, they prefer backpacking with hearing-impaired partners than with normal-hearing partners. Furthermore, for them, their independence enables them to their parents that they can travel alone. In addition, the study findings suggest that “communication negotiation” should be considered for inclusion in the motivation typology as a new dimension for hearing-impaired backpackers. Finally, the current study provides valuable insights into the behaviors of hearing-impaired backpackers and recommendations for tourism operators.     

The hedonic nature of conservation volunteer travel

Informed by the hedonic consumption value framework, this research explores the relationships between individuals' environmental views, consumption values, and intentions to engage in conservation volunteer travel, to argue that contemporary conservation volunteer travel needs to be re-conceptualized. Such perspective on conservation volunteer travel takes into account young adults' desires for hedonic travel experiences. The study results expose that hedonic and utilitarian values of conservation volunteer travel mediate the relations between of pro-environmental views on the intent to volunteer in conservation projects. In other words, through participation in conservation volunteer travel, consumers gain both hedonic pleasure as well as a sense that their actions are needed given increasing global environmental degradation.     

旅游专业本科生择业标准及其对旅行社的就业认知

旅游专业学生在本行业就业率低的问题一直困扰着旅游学术界、教育界和旅游行业,不少学者从不同角度研究并试图解决这一问题,但却很少从学生择业标准的角度去考虑.文章运用并检验里查得森(Richardson)择业影响因素量表,测量旅游专业本科生的择业标准及其对旅行社的就业认知,结果表明:学生认为旅行社不具备其择业时最看重的因素(“融洽的同事关系”、“喜欢的工作”、“良好的晋升机会”);并且学生认为旅行社具备的主要就业因素是其择业时最不看重的(“出国旅行的机会”、“专业对口”、“职业流动性”);学生认为旅行社存在超工作时间、超工作量、晋升机制不合理、起薪不理想等行业不规范现状,但学生也认为旅行社具有锻造高技能、有责任感人才的就业优势.根据学生择业标准与旅行社的就业认知IPA分析结果,文章提出了相应的对策来改善旅游本科生行业就业率低的问题.     

我国酒店在线预订价格竞争的实证研究

在线旅行预订已经成为消费者日益青睐的旅游产品消费模式,其中酒店的在线预订增长量尤其明显。目前在酒店在线预订市场中,既有旅行在线代理商也有酒店官网,且两者竞争越来越激烈。这两种主要的酒店在线预订其价格有没有显著性差异？不同类型酒店差异表现是否一致？文章借用配对样本￡检验方法对我国酒店在线预订价格竞争进行实证研究,深度剖析两种在线预订渠道的定价规律及形成原因,并提出相关建议。     

How does family influence the travel constraints of solo travelers? Construct specification and scale development

ABSTRACT

Attracting the solo travel market is increasingly important for destination marketing organizations. Despite the wealth of literature on travel motivations of solo travelers, a related domain of research that deserves more attention are the travel constraints that could hinder solo traveling. More specifically, although solo travelers may wish to embark on a journey alone, they must nevertheless address a number of constraints that oftentimes stem from their family’s concerns for them as family represents a critical influencer that could impact their travel decision. Yet, research measuring the influence of family remains under-studied. In order to address this gap, this study connects knowledge on travel constraints with literature on family dynamics to develop a valid and reliable measurement scale for assessing family pressures on solo travelers. Destination marketers can apply this scale to evaluate the effectiveness of their marketing strategies at easing the concerns of solo travelers as a result of family pressures.