Holiday destinations: modelling vacationers' preferences

Abstract

The travellers' perceptions of salient travel-related attributes influence their intentions, which in turn affect their decision-making process. It is known that the potential benefits associated with a particular holiday destination are of varying importance to travellers. Thus, to improve the relative preference for a particular destination or to discount a competitive destirtation's ability and/or to attract more travellers, efforts must be exerted to change or to stress the relative importance of specific attributes considered salient by the targeted travellers. The purpose of this paper is to investigate Irish travellers' perceptiotrs of salient attributes that lead to their travel preferences of major foreign holiday destinations. In particular, the data collected in three different boroughs of Dublin, indicated that Irish travellers demonstrated different behavioural patterns in selecting a particular foreign holiday destination.

Keywords

Irish travel market behavioural patterns market segmentation attitude tourism products/services promotion campaigns discernment

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Howards, J.A. and Seth, J.N. (1969) 'The Theory of Buyer Behavior', John Wiley & Sons, New York; Bass, F. M. and Talanzyk (1972) 'An Attitude Model for the Study of Brand Preferences', Journal of Marketing Research, No. 9; Wilkie, W.C. and Pessemier, E.A. (1973) 'Issues in Marketing's Use of Multi-Attribute Attitude Models', Journal of Marketing Research, Vol. 10, pp. 428-441.

Um, S. and Crompton, J.L. (1990) 'Attitude Determinants in Tourism Destination Choice', Annals of Tourism Research , Vol. 17, No. 3, pp. 432-448.

Kaynak, E. , Odabasi, Y. and Kavas, A. (1986) 'Tourism Marketing in a Developing Economy: Frequent and Infrequent Visitors Contrasted', in Kaynak, E. (ed.), 'Service Industries in Developing Countries', Frank Cass, London, pp. 43-59.

Kaynak, E. and Kucukemiroglu , O. (1993) ' Foreign Vacation Selection Process in an Oriental Culture', Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing and Logistics, Vol. 5, No. 1, pp. 21-41.

Kaynak, E. (1985) Developing Marketing Strategy for a Resource Based Industry', Tourism Management, Vol. 6, No. 3, pp. 184-193.

Woodside, A.G. and Etzel, M. (1980) 'Vacation Travel Behavior and Perceived Benefits of Home State Residents', Business and Economic Review, pp. 28-35.

Darden, W.R. and Perreault, W.D. (1975) 'A Multivariate Analysis of Media Exposure and Vacation Behavior with Life-Style Covariates ', Journal of Consumer Research, No. 2 (September), pp. 93-103.

Hawes, D. (1978) 'Empirically Profiling Four Recreational Vehicle Market Segments', Journal of Travel Research, pp. 13-20.

Woodside, A.G. and Pitts, R. (1976) 'Effects of Consumer Lifestyles, Demographics and Travel Activities on Foreign and Domestic Travel Behavior ', Journal of Travel Research, pp. 13-15.

10.

Kaynak, E. and Yavas, U. (1981) 'Segmenting the Tourism Market by Purpose of Trip', Tourism Management , Vol. 2, No. 2, pp. 105-112.

11.

Raaij, W.V. and Francken, D.A. (1984) 'Vacation Decisions, Activities and Satisfaction', Annals of Tourism Research, Vol. 11, No. 1, pp. 101-112.

12.

Crask, M.R. (1981) 'Segmenting the Vacationer Market: Identifying the Vacation Preferences, Demographics, and Magazine Readership of Each Group', Journal of Travel Research, Vol. 20, No. 2, pp. 29-34.

13.

Graham, J.E.J. and Wall, G. (1978) 'American Visitors to Canada: A Study in Market Segmentation', Journal of Travel Research, Vol. 16, pp. 21-24.

14.

See ref. 4 above.

15.

Weber, S. and Telisman-Kosuta (1991) 'The Possibilities of Foreign Tourism Market Segmentation and the Evaluation of the Tourism Supply of SR Croatia (Yugoslavia)', in Kaynak, E. (ed.), 'Sociopolitical Aspects of International Marketing', The Haworth Press, Inc., Binghampton, NY, pp. 347-365.

16.

Gartner, W.C. (1989) 'Tourism Image: Attribute Measurement of State Tourism Products Using Multidimensional Scaling Techniques ', Journal of Travel Research (Fall), pp. 16-20; Mayo, E.J. Jr and Jarvis, L.P. (1981) 'The Psychology of Leisure Travel', CBI Publishing Company, Inc., Boston, MA, pp. 178-224.