Swiss travel market — aspects of consumer behaviour in an aging travel market

Abstract

Switzerland with its seven million inhabitants, of which 20,1 % (BfS 2001) are non‐Swiss citizens, ranks among the top seven nations with respect of income per capita. Due to its wealth as well as its small size, the travel intensity of Switzerland is comparably high. Because it always had a tradition of neutrality and liberal political positions, freedom of travel was guaranteed for generations. Since Switzerland hasn't been drawn into World War 2, the emergence of the new dynamic of travel took place early in the fifties. Switzerland therefore is a kind of very developed travel market. According to the WTO statistics, Switzerland ranks among the top tourist buyer countries (cp. WTO 2001). The Institute of Public Services and Tourism at the University of St.Callen (former Institute for Transport and Tourism) has been conducting a survey on the travel behaviour of Swiss customers for more then thirty years (cp. Bieger & Laesser 2002). On a regular base of every second to third year, a representative consumer panels of 2000 households is interviewed by written questionnaires. The Swiss travel market proves a high validity in comparisons with the official Swiss statistical figures for travel, with one small limit: The number of travels intensity is underestimated due to the fact that people tend to undervalue the number of travels to their usual destinations like second homes. The goal of this contribution is to give an overview on the travel behaviour of Swiss customers as example for a well developed country. This will be done in two parts. Part 1 is featuring some descriptive main results, concerning the development and structure of the overall travellers. Part 2 consists of two papers, done by Ph.D students in a seminar taught by the authors of this contribution at the University of St. Gallen. These two articles give a deeper insight into some aspects of travel behaviour.

Citation

Bieger, T. and Laesser, C. (2002), "Swiss travel market — aspects of consumer behaviour in an aging travel market", Tourism Review, Vol. 57 No. 4, pp. 23-27. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb058391