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.     

Restoring tourist confidence and travel intentions after disasters: some insights from a rejoinder to a series of unfortunate events in Malaysian tourism

Many countries face a decline in tourist confidence and reduced travel intentions after disasters. However, Malaysia – a country that experienced a series of aviation tragedies throughout 2014 – encountered an overall increase in inbound tourists and monetary receipts. This article more closely examines the effects of these unfortunate events on Malaysian tourism and identifies several strategic avenues that can contribute to restoring tourist confidence and reigniting tourist interest in travelling to disaster-stricken countries.     

Chinese medical tourists – Their perceptions of Taiwan

This study explores the motivations and perceptions of Chinese medical tourists visiting Taiwan regarding the quality of tourism packages and the medical services consumed. Knowing the factors that motivate medical tourists and their quality demands for tourism operators and medical institutions is important for medical tourism planners to develop and organize services that serve their customers. Particularly, findings can help tourism operators plan customized itineraries and healthcare services, including software and hardware facilities, for Chinese tourists.     

Leisure,international retirement migration,and retirement adjustment: insights from the best exotic marigold hotel movies

ABSTRACT

International retirement migration (IRM) is a growing phenomenon linked to increased longevity, early retirement, and improved financial status. Encompassing both travel and leisure experiences, IRM is a topic relevant to both tourism and leisure studies. By analysing the fictional movie series The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2012) and The Second Best Marigold Hotel (2015) from psychological, gerontological, and sociological theoretical perspectives, this paper examines motivation, goal setting, continuity and change, and identity development in IRM experiences within tourism and leisure contexts. This paper (a) identified motivations for IRM as finance, romantic relationships, social relations, self-esteem, self-fulfilment, and social norms; (b) in turn, time perception and attitude influence IRM emigrants’ priority and emotional fulfilment; (c) innovation extricates IRM emigrants from role loss and facilitates role change; and (d) IRM emigrants experience various identity development processes. A conceptual framework for IRM is proposed that purports to explain the IRM experience process and indicates that such an understanding of IRM should incorporate psychological, gerontological, and sociological perspectives.     

International flows of people and institutional change

International travel clearly increases human interaction over space and exposes societies to foreign influences, foreign ideas, and foreign institutions. Does international travel promote institutional change in a traveler's home country? This paper uses panel data from 149 countries to test the hypothesis of institutional change stemming from international travel. We generally find that foreign travel does not affect political institutions. In one sub-sample, we find limited evidence that international travel can be a determinant of institutional quality in the home country depending upon whether the home country is an autocracy or democracy.     

Socio-occupational and geographical determinants of the frequency of long-distance business travel in France

Business travel, and long-distance business travel in particular, has received much less attention in research than home-to-work travel. This article explores some determinants of the frequency of long-distance business travel. It focuses on the influence of two parameters that have been little studied: the individual’s socio-occupational group and the workplace location. The data used were provided by the 2008 French National Transport and Travel Survey. Following a review of the literature, a Poisson regression is performed on the frequency of long-distance business trips. The most significant determinants are socio-occupational category, income, gender and the urban or rural nature and size in terms of the number of inhabitants of the area of location. In particular long-distance business trip frequency is lower in the Paris urban area than in all the categories of urban areas as well as rural areas because of the highly centralised organisation of economic activity and the transport network in France.     

An analysis of the greenhouse gas emissions profile of airlines flying the Australian international market

International commercial flights (with the exception of flights between countries in European Union including Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein) are currently not subject to greenhouse gas emission reduction regulation. To formulate effective and efficiency policy to manage greenhouse gas emissions from air transport, policy makers need to determine the emissions profiles of all airlines currently flying into their country or region. In this paper, we use 2012 data on airlines' aircraft characteristics, passenger load and cargo load (obtained from statistics reported by Australian Government Bureau of Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Economics) to estimate the volume and carbon efficiency on each international route flying to and from Australia. This is the first study to use actual passenger and cargo load data to determine the greenhouse gas (specifically CO₂) efficiency of airlines operating in the Australian international aviation market. Airlines' CO₂ emission profile is dependent on many factors including but not limited to the aircraft used, payload, route taken, weather conditions. Our results reveal that the airlines’ CO₂ emission profile is not only dependent on the aircraft used and the number of passengers but also the amount of cargo on each flight.     

Understanding the travel motivation and patterns of international students in Korea: using the theory of travel career pattern

This study examined the travel motivation of international students in Korea using the theory of travel career pattern (TCP). In particular, latent profile analysis (LPA) was applied to identify latent classes within international students. Based on the results, four latent profiles were derived and named “Core,” “Longing,” “Middle,” and “Veteran.” The results described the travel motivation and patterns across these four profiles to enhance the understanding of international students in the context of tourism. There were significant differences in travel patterns (i.e. travel companion and information sources) among the profiles segmented by motivation. This study has expanded travel motivation research by (a) applying TCP to an understudied population (i.e. international students in a non-English-speaking country); (b) comparing travel careers between the home country, Korea (i.e. a study abroad destination), and the third countries; and (c) highlighting LPA as a clustering tool to understand travel motivation.     

Public acceptance of and heterogeneity in behavioral beach trip responses to offshore wind farm development in Catalonia (Spain)

A combined travel cost – contingent behaviour survey of residents and tourists in Catalonia is conducted on-site to examine the effects on beach recreational demand of developing an offshore wind farm (OWF) project. The survey considers four potential OWF scenarios with different degrees of visual impact. We allow for heterogeneity in trip preferences among individuals and control for on-site sampling through the use of a random parameters negative binomial (RPNB) model and a Multivariate Poisson log-normal (MPLN) model, respectively. The welfare measures derived from the RPNB model relate to the current beach users only, whereas those from the MPLN model refer to the general population of residents and tourists in Catalonia. The results show the importance of the specific place of location of the OWF project and how the installation of wind turbines would significantly decrease the demand for trips, depending on their degree of visual impacts, leading to a substantial welfare loss. However, the results also show that the project mainly would cause a displacement of trips to other beaches within Catalonia rather than outside Catalonia and that the welfare per trip measures generated by the RPNB and MPLN models substantially differ. Policy implications of these findings are discussed.     

Do people consider an acceptable travel time? Evidence from Berkeley,CA

This paper explores the extent to which people identify an acceptable travel time for each trip they want to make and investigates the primary characteristics of this behavioural threshold. We assume that an acceptable travel time is defined through utilitarian processes that are related to cognitive and affective evaluations of travel that develop throughout a person’s lifetime. We apply a mixed methods approach to explore our hypothesis, based on semi-structured in-depth interviews with a stratified, according to commuting mode, random sample of 20 individuals living in Berkeley, CA. Our results support the validity of the acceptable travel time concept and offer (a) initial evidence on its variation to the travel mode and sociodemographic characteristics and (b) insights into people’s perceptions, attitudes, feelings and experiences about their travel. Thus, our results can contribute to a better understanding of individuals’ travel decisions and valuation of travel time and can inform time–space and accessibility research.