Journal of Travel Research

Two prevailing views of ecotourism relate to conservation and marketing perspectives. Unfortunately, the latter often exploits growing consumer interest in "green" products, through "eco-sell. " Ecotourism would benefit from product and performance stan dards and an ethics-based orientation. Ifproperly managed, conservation and ecotourism can be compatible, complementary, and sustainable.

The travel industry is struggling to survive the erratic movement of the domestic and international economies and the effect on both business and leisure travel. While suppliers are seeking innovative pricing strategies, travel agencies often bear a critical financial impact on a day-to-day basis. This article discusses an easily applied technique for identifying and measuring the productivity components of efficiency and effectiveness in a small travel agency environment.

Tourism strategies often make use of the colorful nature of the traditional people who live in developing regions. Increasingly, cultural conservation, a policy science, is emerging as an advocate of traditional people who are in contact with the developed world. Tourism project directors will increasingly be interacting with such policy-scientists; thus, they should be aware of such decision makers and their priorities.

International tourism integrates itself into the complex world of contemporary global affairs through its dependence on telecommunications technologies and its tolerance for widely fluctuating political, economic, and social conditions. A little-explored area which illustrates the relationship of telecommunications and tourism in terms of factors of globalization is the frequent traveler, and especially the frequent flyer program concept.

This article reports on a 1987 study of the effect of travel information centers (TIC) in Colorado. Stopping at the TIC resulted in a 2.2 day average increase in length of stay and an estimated $1,026,000 additional spending. The income groups most affected were middle and high income level groups. Most travelers who stopped did so to get information — a finding in contrast to earlier studies.

This study evaluates the effectiveness of travel information provided at Indiana state-operated welcome centers in modifying travel behaviors. The travel behaviors consid ered were the extension of time spent in Indiana, selection of alternative attractions, and incremental expenditures produced by longer visits or visiting different places. The findings suggest motorists can be influenced to extend their stay and select alternative attractions which translate into substantial direct economic impact to the state.

The purpose of this study is to investigate bias that may threaten the generalizability of welcome center auto visitors as a sampling frame to represent interstate highway auto travelers. The methods were designed specifically to compare auto visitors who stopped at one of two Texas welcome centers from auto visitors who did not stop at these welcome centers, referred to as "stoppers" and "nonstoppers," respectively. Results indicate significant differences between the stopper and nonstopper samples. When compared to nonstoppers, stoppers were more likely to reside in a nonadjacent state, were older, drove more miles within Texas, were associated with a longer trip planning horizon, had higher expenditures per party, and were more likely to be on a vacation/leisure trip.

Welcome centers have long been recognized as an important part of the tourism promotional mix. However, little is known about the degree to which information provided at welcome centers actually influences visitor behavior. This study examined this issue and found that information provided at welcome centers influences travel behavior but the extent of impact depends largely upon the nature of the trip to the area. A number of managerial implications are discussed based upon the results of the study.

The ability of survey research to accurately represent the characteristics of highway welcome center visitors has become an important issue. This article reports on a study that attempted to evaluate the nonresponse bias associated with Texas Welcome Center visitors. Two data sets are compared: (1) a study that sampled visitors without follow-up on nonrespondents (response rate was 3%); and (2) a study that sampled visitors with follow-up (response rate was 78%). Results indicated that welcome center visitors who responded to sampling without follow-up were associated with a lower proportion residing in the adjacent state and a higher proportion residing in the nonadjacent state compared to respondents of the sample with follow-up. Besides the above consistent bias, different nonresponse bias effects were found across two travel seasons and across two welcome center locations on age, trip length, expenditure pattern, trip planning horizon, and influence of welcome center information.

This study attempted to quantify the contribution of highway infrastructure to tourism's economic impact. When natural and man-made resources were held constant, counties with more miles of highway received more tourist expenditures. Further analysis of only the rural counties showed that the transportation system alone explained a significant amount of variation in tourist expenditures. Implications of the findings for tourism development strategies in rural areas are discussed.

Ecotourism — socially responsible, environmentally protective tourism — is a growing field of increasing interest. This article describes efforts at the global level, and particularly in Canada, to develop guidelines and codes of ethics to shape ecotourism in response to the 1987 report from the U.N. Commission on the Environment and Develop ment (The Brundtland Commission).

This report briefly summarizes the 1993 Travel Outlook Forum held in Washington, D.C., October 28, 1992. Copies of the "1993 Outlook for Travel and Tourism" are available from the U.S. Travel Data Center, Two Lafayette Center, 1133 21st Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036, for $125.