The Japanese Travel Life Cycle

Summary

This paper offers an alternative way of segmenting a non-western travel market, namely, the Japanese outbound market. The segmentation schema comprises several institutionalised forms of travel likely to be undertaken by a Japanese individual in the course of his or her life. Coined the ‘travel life cycle,' the concept fits Japanese society well due to the highly organized and group-oriented patterns of travel that have emerged over the past one hundred years. While this form of segmentation is unlikely to be usefully applied to western travel markets, its application in the Japanese context may suggest that it has relevance when examining the travel patterns of other tradition-bound and group-oriented Asian travel markets such as Korea, China or Indonesia. The paper's conceptual contribution lies in the implicit suggestion that particular cultures may develop and exhibit unique forms of consumption behavior that lie outside the conceptual framework normally adopted by western academics and marketing practitioners. Manageri-ally, the paper suggests ways by which tourism operators and tourism promotion bodies can more efficiently and effectively target Japanese travellers according to the stage of travel life cycle.     

Packaging a Resort: An Analysis of Japanese Ski Holiday Package Tour Brochures

Summary

This paper examines the characteristics of contemporary Japanese package tourism, through an analysis of tour brochures. The brochures are analyzed in terms of functional components of the tours, as well as the visual images that are represented. Drawing on a sample of 15 brochures that contain winter ski package holidays for Japanese travelers in Whistler, British Columbia (Canada), this study identifies several key elements in the promotion of Japanese package tourism. These elements include the lean and flexible nature of the functional components of package tours, and the use of both concrete, and abstract images of tourists and tour experiences in the brochures.     

Modeling Vacation Destination Decisions:

The purpose of this study is to develop a multiple criteria decision-making instrument to model vacation destination-choice decisions of individuals based on the factors deemed to be important for vacation destination choice decisions. The study emphasizes the importance of individual differences in making vacation destination choice decisions. Although this research effort is explanatory in nature, the results reveal that application of behavioral decision theory is possible in modeling individualsÆ vacation destination decisions.     

Revealing Socially Constructed Knowledge Through Quasi-Structured Interviews and Grounded Theory Analysis

Socially constructed knowledge pertains to the everyday understandings that mediate our lives. Much of how we act, our social relationships and how we perceive different phenomena are tempered by this knowledge. Even though this knowledge is important for living within the social world, it is considered to be taken-for-granted and commonsensical. This paper outlines the qualitative techniques of quasi-structured interviewing and grounded theory analysis that can reveal these personally held understandings and meanings. Included with these techniques are trustworthiness strategies aimed at increasing the methodological rigor for this type of qualitative research.     

To go or not to go: travel constraints and attractiveness of travel affecting outbound Chinese tourists to Japan

The fast growth of the Chinese economy has transformed Chinese outbound tourism into one of the major players in the tourism industry worldwide. However, Chinese outbound tourists may still encounter travel constraints in some countries, such as Japan, which has had a close and complicated relationship in history with China. This study adopted the qualitative approach by applying focus group and in-depth interviews to investigate and triangulate the travel barriers affecting Chinese outbound travel to Japan. The findings indicated that domestic nationalist sentiment played a key constraining role in influencing Chinese outbound travel decision-making, followed by current political factors, while quality products and service, as well as social environment encouraged tourists to travel. This research also found that visitors and non-visitors have perception differences in terms of travel barriers and attractiveness of travel.     

How to catch their attention? Taiwanese flashpackers inferring their travel motivation from personal development and travel experience

Backpackers first appeared in the seventeenth century. The twenty-first century has witnessed the rise of a new backpacker subculture given the changing times: one that is closely related to technology use is called flashpackers. The research discussed in this article explores the relationships between travel experience, personal development, and travel motivation of flashpackers. The study uses convenience sampling taken in the lobby of Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport. A total of 400 questionnaires were issued and 375 valid questionnaires were recovered; the rate of return was 93.8%. The results of this study are the following: (1) there are differences between travel experience and travel motivation for Taiwan’s flashpackers; (2) there is a relationship between personal development and travel experience of Taiwan’s flashpackers; (3) there is a correlation between personal development and travel motivation for Taiwan’s flashpackers; and (4) personal development moderately affects the relationship between travel experience and travel motivation for Taiwan’s flashpackers. This study contributes to the tourism industry by enhancing direct targeting of customers, and it provides hospitality and travel agency managers with the means to determine appropriate marketing strategies for flashpackers.     

中国出境旅游目的地的市场定位研究

本文探讨了中国出境旅游目的地的市场竞争以及市场定位，研究表明，中国公民出境旅游目的地的特征属性中，“安全性”与“优美的景色”是中国出境旅游者认为的最重要特征属性；KYST研究结果表明，在中国现已开放的出境旅游目的地中，新加坡与泰国、日本与韩国、埃及与德国是两两相似的出境旅游目的地形象；ALSCAL研究结果表明，中国出境旅游目的地的特征属性之间既具有联系，又具有差异；中国出境旅游目的地国家相互之间具有市场竞争性。为吸引更多的中国大陆旅游者出境旅游，中国出境旅游目的地国家应制定相应的旅游市场营销策略。     

Understanding Japanese tourists’ shopping preferences using the Decision Tree Analysis method

This study was designed to assess the factors affecting Japanese tourists’ shopping preference and intention to revisit Korea. The analytical method applied in this study was Decision Tree Analysis, which is under-utilized in tourism studies. A total of 300 questionnaires were collected on the basis of on-site survey method and used for data analysis. Among interesting findings, three groups including ‘respondents who were satisfied, accompanied, and spent US$50–300 on shopping’, ‘respondents who were satisfied, accompanied, and had a shopping expenditure of US$300–1000’ and ‘respondents who were satisfied, accompanied, and had a shopping expenditure of US$1000–5000,’ showed a high level of intention to return to Korea for the purpose of shopping. In addition, two groups ‘those who were interested in shopping in Korea, preferred a shopping mall as a shopping destination, and had an educational level of below high school’ and ‘those who were interested in shopping in Korea, preferred a shopping mall as a shopping destination, and had an educational level of a college graduate or above’ showed a higher level interest in merchandise than in shopping venue attractiveness.     

我国旅游保险业发展探析

本文在分析旅游保险特点及其根源的基础上,结合我国旅游业发展的实际得出了如下结论:①法定保险商业经营导致了我国的旅游保险不保险;②旅行社无法承担旅游保险销售的重任;③利益问题使我国的旅游保险陷入了困境;④旅游保险产品与服务体系亟需建立.同时认为,我国旅游保险业的健康持续发展,其根本措施在于旅游保险体系的创新.     

Introduction

No abstract available for this article.     

The Situational Influence of Travel Group Composition

Abstract

A substantial amount of statistics and articles in travel magazines indicated that family vacation travel is one of the major worldwide trends. However, very limited empirical research has been dedicated to this special market segment. This study examined Japanese family travelers to Taiwan by comparing and contrasting them with other travel companionship groups including traveling with friends and traveling alone. The importance of travel group composition segmentation was explained and conceptualized through the understanding of the value of social groups from sociology perspective. The results indicated that Japanese family travelers exhibited unique characteristics when traveling. Family travelers tended to be more motivated by learning oriented themes and participated enthusiastically in activities that facilitated experiential learning as well as total physical relaxation. The “traveling with friends” and “traveling solo” segments tended to be seeking more of activities that had strong entertaining and socializing undertones. The traveling solo group appeared to be the most evasive or the least understood in what their needs and preferences were. Marketing implications were discussed.