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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the most important characteristics of the religious package tour as perceived by consumers who travel to the Holy Land and to examine the marketing components that play an important role for pilgrims.

In‐depth interviews were conducted with Greek Orthodox travellers who were about to leave for a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Content analysis was used in order to analyse the transcribed interviews.

Results show that regarding the product mix, hotel ratings and extra benefits are considered of minor importance by the interviewed travellers. However, the tour guide and the trip's schedule and program are the most important factors that influence consumer decisions regarding the purchase of a specific tourism product. In addition, the travel agent's reputation for organising religious trips plays a crucial role. Alternatively, price does not seem to influence travellers to sacred places.

Travel agents that offer tour packages to pilgrims, as well as tourism companies wishing to promote pilgrimages can take into consideration these findings in order to design effective marketing plans.

Although tour packages for pilgrims are profitable, only few studies have focused on this type of traveller. As travel for religious purposes increases, the design of an effective marketing plan may help to further develop the market for pilgrimages.

Emotion work can be defined as demands to display organizationally desired emotions regarding service-worker–customer interactions, as well as the psychological strategies necessary to regulate these emotional demands. This study applies a task-focused concept of emotion work and uses the Frankfurt Emotion Work Scales (FEWS) in a cross-cultural context to measure emotional work demands. The original German FEWS was translated into English and the extent to which the new English FEWS is equivalent to the original German FEWS is evaluated. Cultural effects on emotion work job demands are demonstrated by comparisons between a US (N=51) and German (N=202) travel agent sample. Cultural comparisons suggest that emotional demands in the US sales service include less emotional dissonance (i.e. the requirement to show emotions not actually felt in a situation) than in Germany. Survey results are discussed in terms of implications for further cross-cultural research.

This paper explores the use of the theory of games as a tool for modelling road usage decisions. By explicitly considering the interdependence among road users and their ‘payoffs’ (utility) from road use, an adapted symmetric form of the ‘game of chicken’ is developed. The paper explores the various possible equilibria in this game. The mixed strategy symmetric Nash equilibrium is derived and a probability of road usage by a single user is calculated from this. The latter depends explicitly upon the generalised costs of road usage that include both the monetary and time costs of travel. From the single road user probability of usage, measures of the expected number of users are derived. An examination is made of how these vary with variations in the level of the generalised cost of usage. This provides an insight into how the tools of game theory may aid the understanding of the generation and regulation of road congestion.

This study traces the evolution of offered airfares on 50 busy routes on the US domestic market. Our approach differs from that in the literature in the following ways. First, we trace the lowest offered fares for specific round-trip itineraries, acknowledging both that many trips involve return travel and that the round-trip airfare is often not equal to the sum of the two one-way fares. Many previous studies (e.g., Escobari, 2009; Escobari & Gan, 2007) either looked at fare quotes for specific one-way flights or examined the lowest round-trip quote available. Second, our sample of half of the top 100 domestic routes includes itineraries from markets with varying number of competitors as well as from markets with and without the presence of low-cost carriers (LCCs). Third, we have collected fare quotes simultaneously from three leading online travel agents. Thus, our research design allows us to see whether any systematic airfare differences exist across the different online distributors of travel services.

The purpose of this paper is to study the informational role played by an intermediary in the service industry.

The paper used survey and choice data collected from agents and customers, respectively, in the hotel industry.

The paper shows that informational role of agents in choice varies from mere facilitation of the transaction (e.g. making reservation) to a more active role involving accurate predictions about attributes that consumers will perceive important, more realistic performance evaluation of choice options and providing information about experience attributes. The results also show how an agent's role depends on customer's prior knowledge about the choice options, the goal underlying service consumption (e.g. business vs vacation travel), benefits sought by the consumer and the agent's perception about a long term relationship with the consumer. Finally, the results also reveal a unique pattern of differences between agents and consumers in the perceived importance and performance ratings of various features of the service.

This research is limited to agents in the hotel industry. The hypotheses should be tested on other service agent industries such as airlines and restaurants. Future research should consider other alternative sources of information that consumers may use, such as printed material.

The unique nature of the data set – that is, information from the agent as well as the consumer on the same transaction – offers a great opportunity to study the two different points of view and test some hypothesis regarding the degree to which the players understand each other.

This paper aims to identify the most popular travel information sources used among tourists and investigates how travel information selection differs across travel experience and gender.

This study used convenient and quota sampling strategy, questionnaires were distributed to 270 respondents at Sultanahmet and Grand Bazaar areas. A screening question was used to classify respondents.

First, past travel experience, travel agent, travel websites and hotel websites are generally the most frequently used travel information sources in destination selection due to conveniences and reliability. Second, first-timers prefer to use external information sources such as Facebook, guidebooks, travel agents and newspapers to gather information about destinations, whereas repeat visitors prefer to use internal information sources such as friends’ suggestions and past travel experience. Lastly, female visitors rely more on internal information sources such as friends’ suggestions and past travel experience. However, males prefer to use external information sources like Facebook, television, blog, travel agents, newspaper and guidebooks in choosing Turkey as a destination.

Because factors studied, travel information sources selected, number of respondents and questionnaire distribution area are limited, future studies can expand to a bigger area so more respondents could get more reliable results.

This paper could help tourism industries understand searching behaviours among different types of tourists better to promote businesses in convenient sources and reach target customers easily.

This paper fulfils an identified need to study how travel information searching behaviours differ among tourists.

This paper aims to deepen understanding of the role played by new technological tools used in customer–travel agency (TA) interactions by analysing the TA owner/managers' perceptions, pre- and post-Covid-19, regarding the effectiveness of in-store traditional and innovative tools.

This exploratory study is based on a questionnaire-based survey conducted among Italian TAs and distributed via email from September 2020 to January 2021.

The study highlights how, even among TAs, the role of in-store technology is gradually taking on greater importance, and it delves into the specific business and socio-demographic factors that seem to cause differences among agencies.

The study focuses on the Italian context, which does not allow for any generalisations. Furthermore, it is only the travel agent perspective that is observed and not the consumer's.

In addition to helping to bridge the literature gap, this study on in-store technologies focuses on the TAs sector, where human resources and human relationships play a decisive role in customer experience and interaction. The paper investigates the travel agents' point of view regarding the introduction of new in-store technologies; it also highlights their growing adoption and use, overall, despite the travel catalogue still remaining the main tool for interacting with customers. The study also shows how the advent of Covid-19 has increased travel agents' propensity to use digital technologies.

In the tourism sector it is often impossible for an travel agent to answer all the specific questions about destinations in a certain area. The tourist expects an expert in front of him, but a travel agent can't know everything about all the holiday resorts. Also taking into account his lack of time due to the enormous number of tourists, the travel agent will overwhelm the client with detailed brochures. Unfortunately, this service doesn't fulfill the requirements of quality management. The travel agent needs a tool to give better advice to the tourist. At the same time this can result in a strategic differentiation from competitors. Together with the students of the special licentiate in Tourism at the Limburg University Centre, Faculty of Applied Economics, we have designed such an advice system. It should lead to an improvement in the quality of advice given to the tourist who is looking for the appropriate holiday destination. We used the technology of an expert system. The experiment was limited to the 13 seaside resorts on the Belgian Coast.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze perceptions of service cannibalization from sales agents when faced with increased online sales, and their consequences on the employee. The authors assess the effect of service cannibalization perceptions on insecurity, satisfaction, alienation, sales agents’ effort. The study also examines relationships between effects on sales agents’ service sabotage during service delivery.

Data were collected from 497 travel agency sales agents, and structural equation modeling was used to examine hypothesized relationships.

The results suggest that sales agents’ perceptions of service cannibalization influence employees, and have repercussions regarding service sabotage.

Mediators were not tested, and the model does not capture the phenomenon’s complexity. This study reinforces the importance of capturing sales agents’ perceptions from travel agency managers in reducing negative consequences on employees, which is particularly important given multichannel marketing when online marketing channels coexist with traditional sales forces.

This study offers insights to firms regarding perceived cannibalization and its consequences on sales agents’ motivation. Organizations should find ways to minimize insecurity, dissatisfaction, and alienation.

This study examines psychological influences of the addition of an internet channel on sales agents’ job-related outcomes, and its relationship with sales agents’ service sabotage during service delivery.

This paper discusses the attitude and views of travel consultants on the impact of Internet related technologies on their future employment and their abilities to cope with the threat of dis‐intermediation. The authors anticipate that changes in the travel distribution process brought about by the Internet and other technologies will result in retail travel agencies experiencing lower business volume and hence difficulty in maintaining business viability. Against this background, a number of questions need to be addressed. What is the attitude of consultants towards new technologies in travel distribution? Are travel consultants prepared to meet the new challenges? What will be the role of travel consultants? Using a survey of 102 travel consultants, the paper shows the lack of awareness and negative attitude displayed by travel consultants in this rapidly changing distribution environment. The paper further suggests measures and training programs that could be undertaken to address the situation.