A study of pleasure trip planning behavior with implications for improved tourism promotion

The role of promotion in the tourism industry has increased as competition has increased. While most of the scholarly literature on tourism promotion has focused on identification of media selection behaviors of pleasure travelers and the effectiveness of promotion programs using various promotion vehicles, the issue of timing of promotional messages has received limited attention.; The focus of this study was on the timing aspects of trip planning behavior of Michigan pleasure travelers, with the goal of providing information to tourism marketers so that they can schedule tourism promotion distribution to achieve maximum impact. Four elements were involved and investigated in this study: (1) the duration and frequency distribution for three trip planning intervals, (2) two different decision making approaches underlying the trip planning and decision making process, (3) variables that influence the duration of the total trip planning interval, and (4) the distribution of the three study relevant dates.; The findings of this study are based on data collected from telephone interviews conducted during the three year period January 1996 through December 1998. The data set included 1,476 completed cases during this three year period. The analyses performed were primarily descriptive in nature; however, ordinary least square regression analysis was performed to identify variables that influence the duration of the total trip planning interval.; Almost 68% of Michigan pleasure travelers began to plan their trips and made final decisions within one month of travelling. The information processing interval was found to be a surprisingly short—seven days long—with a strongly skewed distribution toward zero. In fact, 85% of respondents reported zero number of days engaged in information processing.; Two different decision making approaches, instant decision-makers and hesitant decision-makers, were defined and compared across selected variables. Analyses revealed several statistically significant differences between the two groups. Michigan pleasure travelers are likely to take a longer time to plan their trips if: (1) trips are taken during summer; (2) the travel party is large; (3) they participate in outdoor recreation and attend a festival or event; (4) it is a vacation trip; (5) they stay at a friend's or relative's home; (6) the duration of trip was longer; and (7) if total trip expenditures are greater. An examination of detailed frequency plots of dates when: trip planning began, trip destination was selected, and the trip began revealed a clustering of frequencies early in the month.; Collectively, the results from this study suggest that: (1) most promotional messages would be likely more effective if timed to appear relatively close to when a trip is expected to begin; (2) somewhat appear to be promotion releases are desirable when targeting summer vacation travelers; and (3) advertisements that appear early in the month are likely to have a greater impact than those that appear later in the month. Of these, the first may be the most at odds with current tourism industry promotion practices.