Search results

This study aims to explore the heterogeneity of the tourist market for people with a physical disability (PwPD) based on travel barriers, to serve them better, from a tourism marketing perspective.

A market segmentation analysis was conducted on a sample of 480 PwPD in Sichuan Province, China, based on their perceived travel barriers. Data were obtained through three on-site and four online surveys. A four-step factor-item mixed segmentation, including factor analysis, cluster analysis, discriminant analysis and chi-square tests, was applied to examine the differences among PwPD tourist market segments in terms of various demographic characteristics, disability conditions (e.g. duration of disabilities and causes of impairment) and travel features (e.g. travel frequency and tourist destinations).

This study revealed that the PwPD tourist market is heterogeneous due to individual perceived travel barriers. Three market segments were identified, namely, the Explorer Moderates group, the Explorer Minimals group and the Explorer Intensives group. Additionally, the three market segments were found to have significant differences in terms of travel barriers, demographic characteristics, travel features and disability conditions.

This research provides suggestions for authorities and private entities to optimize the layout of accessible facilities in public areas for the benefit of all. It also offers crucial implications for tourism marketers to determine the key facets of marketing, for travel organizers to evolve the organization of travel groups for PwPD, and for practitioners to provide personalized tourism services.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to apply perceived travel barriers as a market segmentation criterion in understanding PwPD as a heterogeneous travel market. The findings of this study initially expand the scope of application of the travel barrier model and deepen understanding of the Chinese PwPD tourist market from a marketing perspective. The study results elucidated the heterogeneity and characteristics of this market through a four-step factor-item mixed segmentation approach, offering new insights into the behaviors and experiences of travelers with disabilities.

本研究旨在探索肢体残障人士旅游市场的异质性, 以便从旅游营销的角度更好地为他们服务。

基于对中国四川480名肢残人士出游障碍感知的问卷调查, 探索了肢残人士的旅游市场细分。数据是通过七次现场和在线调查获得; 采用四步因子-项目混合细分法, 根据残障状况、人口统计特征和旅游特征, 识别出肢残群体旅游细分市场之间的差异。

研究发现, 基于个体感知的出游障碍, 肢残群体旅游市场是异质的, 研究确定了三个细分市场, 即低度、中度和高度受限群体。三个细分市场在出行障碍、人口特征、出游特征和残障状况方面存在显著差异。

这项研究有助于政府管理部门优化公共区域无障碍设施布局; 旅游营销者确定营销的重点, 并为旅游组织者设计肢残旅游团体成员构成, 以及从业者提供个性化旅游服务提供重要的启示。

论文首次将感知出游障碍作为市场细分标准, 用以理解肢残群体作为异质游客市场。本研究的发现拓展了出游障碍模型的应用范围, 并从市场营销的角度加深了对中国肢残游客市场的理解。研究结果通过四步因子-项目混合细分方法阐明了该市场的异质性和特点, 为肢残游客的行为和体验研究提供了新见解。

Este estudio explora la heterogeneidad del mercado turístico de las personas con discapacidad física (PcDF) en función de las barreras percibidas para viajar, con el fin de prestarles un mejor servicio desde una perspectiva de marketing turístico.

Se realizó un análisis de segmentación de mercado en una muestra de 480 PcDF en Sichuan, China, en función de las barreras que percibían para viajar. Los datos se obtuvieron a través de tres encuestas in situ y cuatro encuestas en línea. Se aplicó una segmentación mixta factor-ítem de cuatro pasos que incluye análisis factorial, análisis de conglomerados, análisis discriminante y pruebas de chi-cuadrado para examinar las diferencias entre los segmentos del mercado turístico de PcDF, en términos de diversas características demográficas, condiciones de discapacidad (por ejemplo, duración de la discapacidad, causas de la discapacidad) y características de los viajes (por ejemplo, frecuencia de viaje, destinos turísticos).

Este estudio reveló que el mercado turístico de las PcDF es heterogéneo debido a las barreras de viaje percibidas por cada individuo. Se identificaron tres segmentos de mercado, a saber, el grupo de Exploradores Moderados, el grupo de Exploradores Mínimos y el grupo de Exploradores Intensivos. Los tres segmentos de mercado presentaban diferencias significativas en cuanto a las barreras para viajar, las características demográficas, las características del viaje y las condiciones de discapacidad.

Este estudio es el primero en aplicar las barreras percibidas para viajar como criterio de segmentación de mercado para comprender a las PcDF como un mercado turístico heterogéneo. Los hallazgos de este estudio amplían inicialmente el ámbito de aplicación del modelo de barreras para viajar y profundizan en la comprensión del mercado turístico chino de PcDF desde una perspectiva de marketing. Los resultados de nuestro estudio explicaron la heterogeneidad y las características de este mercado a través de un enfoque de segmentación mixta factor-ítem de cuatro pasos, contribuyendo a la literatura sobre el comportamiento y las experiencias de los viajeros con discapacidad.

Esta investigación proporciona sugerencias para que las autoridades y las entidades privadas puedan optimizar la disposición de instalaciones accesibles en zonas públicas en beneficio de todos. También ofrece implicaciones importantes a los comercializadores turísticos para que determinen aspectos clave del marketing, a los organizadores de viajes para que evolucionen en la organización de grupos de viaje para PcDF y a los profesionales para que presten servicios turísticos personalizados.

Consumer-driven technology innovations are transforming travel behavior. However, travel suppliers are still struggling to grasp their customers’ desires regarding mobile device usage in travel and also face other barriers. This paper aims to take a two-pronged approach to identify the gap between what travelers would like to do on mobile devices and what suppliers currently offer and to provide insights from technology industry experts on future trends.

This paper uses two exploratory studies: a consumer survey to understand travelers’ needs and wants regarding mobile devices and a qualitative study to learn more about how travel suppliers are responding and to identify barriers. Statistical techniques include ANOVA tests to identify individual differences and factor analyses to discover patterns in the data.

Consumers would like to do more on mobile devices than is currently available; therefore, industry providers must be more forward-thinking with technology development and overcome the barriers identified in this paper.

Given the limitations to existing supplier offerings and capabilities, travelers were asked what they would like to do on mobile devices. Although marketing and technology personnel from various companies were interviewed, other perspectives exist.

This paper contributes to the technology adoption and service-supplier innovation literatures by helping mobile technology service providers in the travel industry better understand and bridge the supplier-user gap. Suggestions to close this gap and predictions from technology industry experts are included to direct future actions.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the views of Scottish schoolchildren on active travel to school and their ideas about promotion strategies for school‐based interventions.

Focus group discussions were conducted with 66 students from four primary and three secondary schools.

The most common perceived barriers to active school travel were personal safety, weather conditions and time/distance. To a lesser extent, image, physical discomfort and aspects of the physical environment also prevented children from walking or cycling to school. Perceived benefits centred on health and fitness, environmental and social factors. Enjoyment, confidence and social influences were all discussed, with the latter appearing to have the most significant impact on active travel behaviour. Students suggested a number of potential promotion strategies, including incentives and reward schemes to enhance motivation. Practical exercises such as a group walk or cycle were more popular than classroom‐based activities.

Findings are limited to Scottish schoolchildren aged 10‐13 in rural and semi‐rural locations. Further research covering younger and older children, as well as more urban locations will broaden understanding of the impact of age and geographical location.

The findings identify a number of influences on active travel behaviour among young people. Advancing understanding of determinants of context‐specific physical activity is important for the development of effective interventions.

This paper draws on students' own ideas about the ways in which active travel should be promoted and, as such, has important implications for the development of appropriate and acceptable school‐based active travel programmes.

This paper uses a supplemented health belief model (HBM) to explain the risk perception of COVID-19 coronavirus infection by potential and actual domestic and international travelers (from primarily European countries) in the early pre-vaccine phase of the pandemic and its influence on their travel intentions, decisions, and actions. With a health crisis of this magnitude, it is vital to understand the effect of COVID-19-associated containment measures and safety industry strategies in abating public fear and apprehension associated with non-essential travel.

The authors used a sequential transformative design consisting of a (QUAN + Qual) survey to explore the HBM dimensions. The questions in the quantitative part of the survey were disseminated online examine perceptions of the severity and susceptibility of the disease, travel risks and willingness to travel. The questions in the qualitative face-to-face survey examined, how international/cross-border travelers (from Spain and Germany) perceive the benefits and barriers of personal protective behavior and the potential influence of cues to action.

Results suggest that despite potential fear arousal and confusion associated with this infectious disease, people were willing to travel during periodic on-and-off travel restrictions and perceive the benefits of such travel as outweighing barriers like wearing masks, social distancing and other containment measures.

The conceptual model enabled the capture of real-time traveler's feelings about the benefits of traveling in the presence of the coronavirus and their perceptions of COVID-19 safety strategies used at destinations. This study adds to the lack of existing knowledge about potential psychological factors influencing travel decisions and behavior, including self-protective behavior. As borders reopen and we progress towards tourism and hospitality recovery, the results of this study can assist organizations, including health officials and governments, by reminding them of the likelihood of residual public fear when planning their COVID-19 safety strategies.

Given the scarcity of COVID-19 research on people's travel intentions and behavior following periods of social isolation due to lockdowns and border closures, this study captures sample public perceptions at two stages early in the pandemic. It is the first to apply all of the HBM dimensions with the addition of travel risk as a construct to investigate people's travel intentions and behaviors without vaccinations or treatments and to include cues to action in the investigation.

This article describes selected findings from a research study examining the travel experiences (including walking, using public transport, cars, bikes, or taxis) of people experiencing mental health difficulties, specifically in relation to travelling to learning or work. The research sits within the Mental Health Partnership Programme run by the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education, the Learning and Skills Council and the Inclusion Institute, which works to improve access to and success in learning for adults experiencing mental health difficulties.

This study aims to analyse what drives and limits the Dutch population during COVID-19 in their intention to travel for leisure once travel restrictions have been lifted, to gain an insight in the psychological travel barriers following a period of crisis.

The research process involved an online self-administrated method created with one of the leading research and web-based survey tools called Qualtrics. The questionnaire was filled by 402 respondents.

The findings indicate that the impact of COVID-19 on cutting down travel plans, certain personal values and structural constraints have a positive relationship with the leisure travel intention to various destinations. Moreover, risk perceptions and intrapersonal constraints have a positive relationship with domestic leisure travel intentions. However, these factors have a negative connection with the leisure travel intention to some international destinations. Further, decreased perceptions of risks have a negative relationship with the domestic leisure travel intentions.

Using questionnaires in the form of online, self-administrated surveys made it impossible to get an insight in and have control over who responded to the questionnaire. Gaining an insight into the factors impacting the leisure travel intentions following a period of crisis will make it possible for the tourism industry to respond adequately to future crises and will make it easier for destination marketers and managers to attract new tourists during the recovery process.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, no analysis has been so far published with a focus on the impact of COVID-19 on the Dutch population and their intention to travel. It is crucial for gaining an insight into leisure travel intention and the factors impacting this intention following a period of crisis since travel intention is an under-researched topic of academic tourism literature. This study closes the existing gap in literature.

People with autism and their families struggle with travel because of its complexity. This study aims to promote travel participation by exploring the travel needs and patterns of people with autism and their families.

A total of 28 participants were interviewed. Data were analyzed via constructivist grounded theory.

People with autism and their families displayed five travel patterns: mutual support, relatives’ visitation, independent travel, expanded socialization and package tours. These patterns were adopted in a stepwise fashion as the autistic individuals’ abilities improved. The travel challenges and support needs of Chinese autistic people and their families were identified.

The findings can inform accessibility tourism, promote an understanding of autistic people’s tourism activities among the public and industry marketers and offer strategic guidance about family travel for this population.

This effort responds to a call to investigate disability-related issues. The study evaluated the travel behavior of people with autism and their families, from a developmental perspective, presenting a new angle in research on accessibility tourism.

Purpose — This paper explores the potential of ‘action research’ as transport survey method, with particular emphasis on critically assessing its utility in the resolution of major transport policy challenges, such as the mitigation of climate change and environmental impacts, transport-related social exclusion and intergenerational equity issues. Although not particularly novel within the social sciences, it is an approach that has been largely overlooked within the field of transport studies to date.

Methodology/approach — The paper presents practical examples of where action research has been used to elicit information about people's travel experiences and behaviours and discusses how it achieves different outcomes from other qualitative transport survey methods. It identifies appropriate contexts for action research and explores the skills and techniques to overcome some of the main criticisms of the method. It then evaluates some of the critical challenges of applying an action research approach and identifies potential ways for overcoming these. Finally, it discusses the key challenges for analysis, presentation and dissemination of their action research ‘data’ and potential ways of overcoming these.

Findings — Action research has a long history within the social sciences, dating back to practical problems in wartime situations in Europe and the United States. It can be applied at either the level of individuals, small groups and/or ‘communities’ and organisations, with the expressed aim of bringing together research enquiry and future policy or planned actions (ibid). It provides a useful additional survey technique for policy-makers wishing to understand the detailed process of travel behaviours and barrier to travel at the individual level.

Originality/value of the paper — The action research method is specifically useful for supporting and actively encouraging behaviour change as an integral part of the research process. It has only recently emerged within the literature as a transport survey method. It can be a particularly useful method for developing more collaborative data collection methods research participants enquires and thus enable us to identify their underlying motivations, intentions, perceptions and negotiations, as well as the micro-level impacts of smaller scale transport initiatives.

This study aims to extend the theory of planned behavior (TPB) model with additional factors such as perceived risk, knowledge of COVID-19, social media reviews, destination image and past experience to analyze what influences the travel destination intentions of young people.

An online survey of young people was conducted, and SPSS 20.0 and Smart-PLS (Partial Least Squares) 3.0 software were used to evaluate the measurement and structural models.

The study uses the extended TPB (Ajzen, 1991) to build on the factors affecting the selection of tourist destinations in relation to the risk perception of COVID-19, past experiences and images of destinations when traveling after the pandemic.

This study demonstrates the feasibility of applying the TPB framework and protection motivation theory (PMT) elements to people planning to visit a travel destination in the immediate wake of a public health emergency such as the COVID-19 pandemic. It explains the factors influencing tourists' intentions to visit during and after the pandemic. COVID-19 awareness and previous travel experiences influence post-pandemic travel decisions.

This research result will help build motivation and confidence for local tourism businesses regarding the rapid recovery of the industry among young people. However, businesses need to vigorously promote safety and adapt tourism services to suit the new post-pandemic situation.

The results of this study can help tourism businesses understand why young people may be hesitant to come to their localities for tourism so they can come up with a suitable development strategy to attract tourists.

This study expands on the framework of the TPB to explore additional factors that positively influence youth travel, and the barriers that concern them. It also provides data on the novel context of tourism in the post-pandemic era.