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The purpose of this study is to fill a gap in literature with a meta-analysis of previous studies assessing the decision-making processes of travellers when choosing holiday destinations in times of crisis.

This study presents here an abductive analysis of the findings of 737 peer-reviewed studies published in leading hospitality and tourism journals between 1978 and 2020. The studies in question concentrate on tourist typologies and behaviours when making destination choices in times of crisis, and the garnered data was subjected to a computer-aided data analysis adopting a thematic analysis technique, making use of Leximancer software.

The data was subjected to a thematic analysis and clustered under five main categories based on the distribution of articles by publication year, research topic, author contributions, articles by journal and articles by country (e.g. tourist typology, travellers’ decision-making, holiday decision-making, tourist decision-making, destination choice, traveller behaviour and vacation decision-making).

The limitations of this study include its inclusion only of articles listed in the SCOPUS, Web of Science and ScienceDirect databases. This study makes a critical assessment of the current gaps in literature and proposes questions to be raised in future studies.

This study proposes several topics for future investigation that are considered necessary to close crucial gaps in our understanding of the tourism sector’s response to behavioural trends. The authors’ intention in this regard is to increase the scholarly awareness of decision-making models relevant to destination choice by linking tourist typologies and the behaviour exhibited before, during and after crises.

We report field research undertaken in five sites in New Zealand in which we explored the process of tourists’ in-destination decision-making. We then critique our experiences of conducting this project.

This study aims to explore how social media affects decision-making among tourists and whether there is a potential effect of age, which is studied through generations. For this purpose, baby boomers, Gen X, Gen Y and Gen Z tourists are studied and real-time implications are offered.

The study adopts a descriptive and exploratory design where the conceptual model of social media-based decision-making is developed through a review of the literature. Quantitative analysis is conducted on primary data from 600 Indian tourists. This is done using a self-administered questionnaire adopted from Gulati (2022) after checking its validity and reliability. The statistical analysis for hypothesis testing is done using PLS-SEM path modelling on pooled data. To study the categorical moderating effect of generations, partial least squares multigroup analysis (PLS-MGA) is performed as a paired comparison on every successive generation.

After testing every successive younger generation with an older generation through PLS-MGA, none of the pairs found any significant differences in path coefficients, as the values obtained were 0.05 < p < 0.95 for all five paths (SM → NR, SM → IS, SM → E, SM → P, SM → PPB). This indicates all the generations behave in a similar manner irrespective of them being older or younger, and age does not moderate social media’s impact on decision-making among Indian tourists.

The study establishes India as a unique geographical market and suggests tourism marketers to treat all generations at par, irrespective of age, as they behave and interact with social media in a similar manner. But, because this study is restricted to a single geographical location, i.e. India, further regions can be explored for global generalisation. Future research can also explore other demographics for combined, moderated analysis. Findings from the study suggest that marketers should ensure that equal attention is given to all generations as they engage with social media in a similar manner. Targeted marketing using artificial intelligence can help in ensuring custom ads. Personalisation according to generations can also facilitate greater purchases.

The study fills a major population and knowledge gap by exploring a topic that has been highly under-researched. Also, the study adopts an inclusive approach by analysing all the generations, both younger and older, to understand the potential effect of age on moderating the impact that social media has on tourist decision-making. Further, real-time suggestions and implications are offered to tourism marketers with special reference to the Indian tourism industry.

Independent travelers are those vacationers who have booked only a minimum of their transportation and accommodation arrangements prior to departure on the vacation. Independent travel is an important and growing sector of worldwide tourism. Choice of vacation itinerary for the independent vacation represents a complex series of decisions regarding purchase of multiple leisure and tourism services. This chapter builds and tests a model of independent traveler decision-making for choice of vacation itinerary. The research undertaken employs a two-phase, inductive–deductive case study design. In the deductive phase, the researcher interviewed 20 travel parties vacationing in New Zealand for the first time. The researcher interviewed respondents at both the beginning and the end of their New Zealand vacations. The study compares pre-vacation research and plans, and actual vacation behaviors, on a case-by-case basis. The study examines case study narratives and quantitative measures of crucial variables. The study tests two competing models of independent traveler decision-making, using a pattern-matching procedure. This embedded research design results in high multi-source, multi-method validity for the supported model. The model of the Independent Vacation as Evolving Itinerary suggests that much of the vacation itinerary experienced in independent travel is indeed unplanned, and that a desire to experience the unplanned is a key hedonic motive for independent travel. Rather than following a fixed itinerary, the itinerary of an independent vacation evolves as the vacation proceeds. The independent traveler takes advantage of serendipitous opportunities to experience a number of locations, attractions and activities that they had neither actively researched nor planned.

The choice overload (CO) phenomenon, whereby having many options leads to negative consequences, has been studied widely in psychology and marketing. However, empirical evidence of CO in the tourism context is limited, even though people often encounter numerous choices (e.g., vacation destinations, airfares, hotels, tours) at different stages when planning their holidays. Investigating CO in tourism and hospitality is important because (online) travel advisors are providing tourists with numerous choices, yet they do not know whether or not these decision makers are content after choosing from these large choice sets. This chapter proposes to review and apply insights garnered from the CO literature to tourism research. Accordingly, the chapter proposes five groups of solutions for tourists and travel advisors to avoid CO effects: reducing decision task difficulty, reducing choice-set complexity, reducing preference uncertainty, focusing on decision goals rather than the means to achieve those goals, and adopting appropriate decision-making styles.

This paper aims to respond to a knowledge gap regarding the motivations of medical tourists, the term used to describe persons that travel across borders with the intention of accessing medical care. Commonly cited motivations for engaging in medical tourism are typically based on speculation and provide generalizations for what is a contextualized practice. This research paper aims to complicate the commonly discussed motivations of medical tourists to provide a richer understanding of these motivations and the various contexts in which medical tourists may choose to travel for medical care.

Drawing on semi-structured interviews with 32 former Canadian medical tourists, this study uses the Iso-Ahola’s motivation theory to analyze tourists’ motivations. Quotations from participants were used to highlight core themes relevant to critical theories of tourism.

Participants’ discussions illuminated motivations to travel related to personal and interpersonal seeking as well as personal and interpersonal escaping. These motivations demonstrate the appropriateness of applying critical theories of tourism to the medical tourism industry.

This research is limited in its ability to link various motivations with particular contexts such as medical procedure and personal demographics. However, this study demonstrates that the three commonly cited motivations of medical tourists might oversimplify this phenomenon.

By providing new insight into medical tourists’ motivations, this paper expands the conversation about medical tourists’ decision-making and how this is informed by tourism discourse. This insight may contribute to improved guidance for medical tourism stakeholders for more ethical and safe practices.

The influence of destinations’ poverty on tourism decision-making and, more precisely, destination selection has received scant attention despite the increasing importance of poverty. The purpose of this study is to examine the combination of factors influencing tourists’ destination selection in relation to developed destinations’ rising poverty levels through the adoption of complexity theory.

This study used fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis to examine the combinations of factors that are significant in influencing destination selection whereas necessary condition analysis was used complementarily to evaluate the size effect of the examined conditions. Moreover, semi-structured interviews with industry stakeholders were performed to examine the relationships that describe the generated configurations.

In total, four solutions were generated: the cultural influence and poverty, the destination aspects, the poverty issues and the travel experience and poverty while qualitative data reveal that industry policymakers and practitioners hold different perceptions of tourists’ destination selection process.

Study results show that poverty perceptions influence destination selection. Hence, poverty must be considered in travel behaviour investigations beyond the developing destination context, whereas destinations may select either one or a combination of the generated sufficient configurations when deciding on their tourism development plans.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study examining the effects of developed destinations’ increasing poverty levels on tourism decision-making and specifically on destination selection.

This chapter aims to demonstrate that different cultures influence tourist decision making. Multi-structural models are used to assess to what extend the cultural traits may influence decision-making styles of tourists. Cultural traits and decision-making styles were conceptualized as multidimensional constructs. The empirical study is supported through data from a sample of individuals visiting Lisbon during the New Year events. The analysis shows significant differences within the country of birth. Furthermore, the study concludes that the most important cultural dimensions in each of the countries lead to different decision-making styles. Although there are geographical and temporal limitations, the present study's findings suggest substantial effects of culture in tourist decision making, and these effects are heterogeneous along different countries. This chapter provides insights into how tourism destinations should position themselves in different cultural contexts. This study contributes to the overall understanding of culture as a driving influence in the way tourists decide to travel. Specifically, this chapter provides empirical evidence of how tourists' behavior varies according to the cultural heterogeneity of countries.

This paper aims to study the decision‐making processes of Portuguese tourists traveling to South America and Africa destinations by developing a conceptual framework that focuses on information sources, motivations, perceptions, satisfactions, and behavioral intentions.

The study applies a structural model that looks to explain the factors behind decision making and the relationships present. The relationships are observed in detail through the application of a categorical principal component analysis.

The results of the empirical study show that behavioral intentions precede emotional and cognitive satisfaction, which in turn, are explained through perceptions and motivations. Tourists perceive tourism destinations as places of leisure although little information is available on existing facilities and core attractions.

The study has the restriction of being limited to the Portuguese tourists. However, these findings open paths for further investigation, namely extending to other destinations and to tourists with different motivations.

This study contributes to the overall understanding of the decision‐making processes of tourists. Specifically, the decision processes is assess by considering two stages: the pre‐purchase stage and the post‐purchase stage. These two phases were analyzed in order to understand how people decide to travel to a certain destination.

This study aims to explore when and for what purpose is social media used by tourists in their decision-making; and to further interpret the nature of such usage.

An online questionnaire was administered to 530 Indians who qualified as recent tourists and social media users. Partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) is used to analyse hypothesised relationships; the results helped us to unveil the tourist social media cycle which is a conceptual model of the results obtained.

PLS-SEM results indicate that social media is predominantly used in the pre-travel stage for evaluation purposes, during travel stage for purchase purposes and post-travel stage for post-purchase behaviour. Also, it is noted that social media use by a tourist is an ongoing process, and thus, a conceptual model in the form of tourist social media cycle is unveiled.

This study reveals the unique behaviour of Indian tourists with respect to using social media for travel decision-making, which establishes a different perspective of understanding and further strategizing social media’s use in tourism for a developing nation. Also, the tourist social media cycle stresses on the importance of social media as a digital repository where continuously the user-generated content is used by self (existing) or “others” (potential tourists).

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first study that addresses the population and knowledge gap of understanding social media–based tourist behaviour providing a perspective of a developing nation, specifically India. Further, it unveils the nature of social media use by tourist in the form of a first ever tourist social media cycle.