Public/stakeholder perceptions of airline alliances: The New Zealand experience

The recent proposed alliance between Air New Zealand and Qantas is examined in the context of public opinion within New Zealand. Overall, public support for the alliance was lacking, and several reasons for this are discussed. More than half of respondents were not in favour of the Government of New Zealand having majority ownership in Air New Zealand. In this case, however, the New Zealand public act as both consumers and stakeholders. Thus, the proposed alliance raises issue of national interest as well as consumption-based considerations.     

Evaluating heritage: tourists and holiday visits to heritage sites

This paper analyses ‘top of the mind’ evaluations of respondents who had visited three cultural heritage sites in New Zealand. Unlike many studies, this paper reports data derived from answers written to open-ended questions. The research sought to assess to what extent respondents are purposeful seekers of knowledge, or alternatively are simply seeking experiences that contribute to an overall satisfying visit and to their holiday experiences. While it may be suggested that the needs for relaxation, social bonding and knowledge lead to an evaluation of sites via the importance tourists attributed to factors such as uniqueness, it is found that, for the majority of tourists, uniqueness is either given little importance or is engaged with in shallow ways. The visit to the site is hence evaluated by the contribution it makes to enjoyable holiday-taking, rather than holidaymaking.     

Travel plans: do they work?

This paper reviews the evidence that travel plans have their intended effect, which is to reduce the number of employees commuting alone by car to their place of work. It first outlines the policy background for travel plans in the UK, and reasons for their implementation. It then presents a conceptual model of travel plan development, which is used to analyse the development of travel plans in a number of case studies.The paper then goes on to consider evidence of the scale of the adoption of travel plans by organisations in the UK, and then estimates their impact on levels of travel nationally. It then seeks to explain how take up and hence the effect of travel plans could be made more widespread. It concludes that there is clear evidence that travel plans have an effect at the site level, and potential for a system-wide effect. However, Government must be clear about its objectives for travel plans, if this potential is to be achieved.     

Seniors’ unmet mobility needs – how important is a driving licence?

Previous studies have come to different conclusions regarding how important a driving licence is for seniors to fulfil their mobility needs. We investigated this question based on three groups of Danish seniors: persons who were licensed as drivers (“drivers”); persons who have never been licensed drivers (“never-drivers”); and persons who recently gave up their licence (“ex-drivers”). Data were collected via standardised telephone interviews in 2012 among 863 individuals born in 1939/40. The three groups differed significantly in socio-demographics and health; never-drivers had the least resources, and ex-drivers the poorest health. Moreover, the two unlicensed groups had more unmet mobility needs than drivers. In ordinal regression models, both never having had a licence and having given up a licence significantly affected unmet mobility needs. Among the background variables, which were successively added to the models, health variables were most relevant, while socio-demographics and infrastructure played a minor role. When entering the health variables to the models, the effect of giving up a licence decreased but remained significant for unmet leisure needs, while it became insignificant for unmet shopping needs. The effect of never having had a licence was hardly affected by the inclusion of control variables. The results emphasise the importance of a driving licence in fulfilling seniors’ mobility needs. Contrary to our hypotheses, more experience with, and better access to alternative transport modes cannot sufficiently compensate for mobility problems due to the lack of the option to drive.     

The use of a spatial model to assess conference market share – a new zealand example

This paper is obtained from research undertaken into seven events and conferences at Palmerston North, New Zealand. It applies a model derived from the Lakshmanan and Hansen retail model to conference centres in New Zealand and was used to assess the level of market share that Palmerston North could expect. The research note describes some of the results and problems found in using the model. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The destination image gap – visitors' and residents' perceptions of place: evidence from Waiheke Island,New Zealand

This paper reports results derived from a survey of 2229 residents of, and 2151 visitors to the island of Waiheke, New Zealand. The study finds there was a close similarity of place image held by both visitors and residents. The paper examines the proposal that where congruency exists between visitor and resident image of place, there may be less negative perceptions of visitor impact on the part of residents. Both qualitative and quantitative data were collected and analysed, the former involving the use of CatPac?, a neural network program for analysing textual data. Little support was found for the contention that place images shared by residents and tourists would increase tolerance of tourists on the part of residents.     

For the young and old alike – An analysis of the determinants of seniors’ satisfaction with the true door-to-door DRT system EcoBus in rural Germany

Mobility and transportation service requirements change with growing age. Also in a car-based society like Germany many seniors need to give up driving the car and are dependent on relatives or public transport. Especially in rural areas, the accessibility of public transport is often limited. Demand responsive transportation has occasionally been proposed by researchers as a viable alternative to stop-, route- and time-based public transportation to address such problems. This case study analyses passenger data from the true DRT system EcoBus to identify distinct drivers of old passengers’ satisfaction compared to other passengers. Contrary to existing literature, older people stated to be even more satisfied with the service then younger travellers did. Moreover, older travellers tend to travel alone, but showed slightly higher satisfaction when travelling in groups. The results suggest that older people might be more open-minded and positive regarding flexible public transport schemes than expected.     

The impact of the ‘school run’ on road traffic accidents: A spatio-temporal analysis

Engineering and improved road safety education has resulted in an overall decrease in road traffic accident numbers in Christchurch, New Zealand. The temporal trends of crash data from 1980 to 2004 reveal that lowering of crash rates is not occurring at a uniform rate throughout the day, with comparative increases in crash rates occurring during morning rush hour, and during the ’school run’. No spatial clustering around schools was identified. This suggests that policies to reduce school travel related road accidents need to be focused on reducing overall traffic levels rather than focusing geographically on areas in the immediate vicinity of schools.     

An assessment of ‘international best practice’ in visitor attraction management: does Scotland really lag behind?

This paper compares and contrasts selected management practices among visitor attractions in Scotland, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. The catalyst for the study was the growing perception that management practices among visitor attractions in Scotland are becoming increasingly outdated and that the sector needs to learn from ‘international best practice’ in this respect. A postal questionnaire was sent to all paid‐admission visitor attractions in the four countries. In total, 1022 visitor attractions replied, representing an overall response rate of 41%. Chi‐square analysis was then used to test various hypotheses relating to the uptake of these management practices. A key conclusion is that although management practices do vary significantly among the four countries, Scotland does not necessarily lag behind. Indeed, Scottish visitor attractions seem to lead the way in many respects. Meanwhile, the study finds no strong evidence to suggest that visitor attractions in the other three countries have indeed identified and are following a common ‘international best practice’. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.