Journal of Travel Research

This research empirically examines, for the first time, the correlates of tourist information search behavior. A model is specified and tested in which tourist information search strategies are related to search contingencies, individual (tourist) characteristics, and behavioral search outcomes. Using survey data from a large sample of leisure travelers, tests of association showed substantial support for hypothesized relationships. Tourist information search strategies were found to be the result of a dynamic process in which travelers used various types and amounts of information sources to respond to internal and external contingencies in vacation planning. A discussion of the key findings of the model provides a rich source of managerial implications.

Databased marketing, understood as a comprehensive marketing strategy based on a memory of business transactions with customers, is a crucial step toward gaining competitive advantage in this rapidly changing world and industry. This article discusses the concept of databased marketing and presents the results of a survey of travel agencies in New Zealand. It shows that the travel agencies are involved only to a limited extent in the three identified areas of databased marketing: customer retention, product promotion, and customer creation. Especially in the areas of product promotion and customer creation, considerable opportunities exist to maximize the returns and effectiveness of the existing databases.

The Israel Experience educational tours attract participants primarily through informal marketing. Friends, family, and former participants are the most effective advertisers. Most participants are already connected to community networks through which informal marketing takes place. Those attracted through informal, personal channels are more satisfied with their tours than are those recruited through conventional mass media advertising.

This midterm assessment of a trend study analysis that began in 1992 was designed to monitor the perceptions of residents of Georgia regarding the 1996 Olympic Games. Over time, Georgia resident support remained strong, projected attendance decreased greatly, the intangible benefits were ranked greater than the economic issues, and the top perceived negative consequences dealt with law enforcement issues.

This article reports on the findings of a 1991 and 1995 survey of the use of interactive computer systems in state welcome centers. Results indicate that whereas state use is increasing, ratings of system performance are decreasing. Areas addressed include amount of use, system information, funding, capabilities, uses, and satisfaction with computer performance.

This exploratory examination of the image international students have of rural tourism areas in Pennsylvania documents that they have distinct images and that their responses to them differ depending on travel behavior and sociodemographic variables.

In response to escalating business travel costs, many firms have formed corporate travel management departments to help control these expenses. This study examines how efficiently these departments are operating by employing a stochastic frontier technique in addition to a linear programming procedure. Both of these methods construct efficient frontiers that represent the minimum costs that need to be allocated to corporate travel given the number of trips that firms take. Any costs incurred beyond the efficient frontiers are deemed excess, and the firms are classified as inefficient. The results using both procedures indicate that the corporate travel management departments are relatively efficient. In a competitive market, it is expected that more firms will begin to use in-house travel management departments to help control the rise of travel-related expenses.

The purpose of this article is to review a large number of published empirical studies on modeling international tourism demand and to integrate their findings according to the important explanatory variables used (income, transportation costs, and tourism prices), the proportion of significant findings, and the effect sizes of these major explanatory variables. A meta-analysis of 70 articles is provided, the articles being selected on the basis of their t-statistics, standard errors, F-statistics, and sample sizes. The primary purpose of the meta-analysis is to enable general conclusions to be drawn from the major published empirical studies regarding the relationships between international tourism demand and income, transportation costs, and tourism prices.

Without a considered analysis of the costs and benefits of policies that restrict tourist activity, the various parties that influence and are influenced by the development of the tourism industry may be frustrated in their search for productive dialogue and consensus. Although restrictive policies on outbound tourism are common and widespread, little prior work has examined the effectiveness and consequences of such policies. This article evaluates the impacts on outbound tourist behavior of lowered duty-free import limits in the case of Mexican cross-border visitors to the United States. Results suggest that (a) stable cross-border expenditures and compensatory behavior by outbound tourists may limit the effectiveness of restrictions on duty-free imports and that (b) these restrictions may increase overall tourism imports, implying that attempts to restrict or regulate tourist activity may produce results that are the opposite of those intended.

This study provides a profile of people who use the Internet to gather travel information or to purchase travel arrangements. Compared to other World Wide Web users, those who search for or purchase travel on-line are more likely to be 26 to 55 years of age; to have higher incomes; to be employed in management, professional, or computer-related occupations; and to have more years of experience on-line. Concerns about credit card security, evaluation of product quality, and privacy issues are problems that on-line retailers of travel products must overcome.

Heritage tourism is growing rapidly in popularity as people seek to rediscover the past. One obvious group of attractions heritage tourists seek out are museums. Many museums are outside the government sector, and for these museums, tourism offers considerable scope to generate revenue to fund new displays and pay recurrent costs. This study reports on a survey of three Queensland rural heritage museums designed to discover visitors’ reactions to the communication channels used to alert them to the existence of the museums and to identify the visitors’ preferred methods of advertising. The outcome of the survey identifies the need for museum custodians to reconsider the promotional strategies employed to advertise rural museums to the drive tourist market and suggests a simple checklist of low-cost yet effective advertising methods that can be used by rural museums.