The Travel Industry: What's in a Name?

The travel and tourism industry is enormous in both size and importance. There can be little doubt that the field is striving to accommodate the diversity of opinion concerning what the industry is and how it can be improved and enlarged even further. Resistance to critiquing long-held beliefs about the industry may inhibit its future. Deconstruction, a postmodern method of analysis, is proposed as one tool with which to engage in reflection upon what the industry is and where it may be headed.

Prolegomenon to a History of Travel

The author attempts to provide a definition of travel by comparing it with the instinctive migration of animals and birds and viewing its changes over time. As a study of motion voluntarily undertaken, a history of travel can contribute to a better understanding of human beings

Travel Marketing: Industry Relationships and Benefits

In the discussion - Travel Marketing: Industry Relationships and Benefits - by Andrew Vladimir, Visiting Assistant Professor, School of Hospitality Management at Florida International University, the author initially states: “A symbiotic relationship exists among the various segments of the travel and tourism industry. The author has solicited the thinking of 37experts and leaders in the field in a book dealing with these relationships and how they can be developed to benefit the industry. This article provides some salient points from those contributors.” This article could be considered a primer on networking for the hospitality industry. It has everything to do with marketing and the relationships between varied systems in the field of travel and tourism. Vladimir points to instances of success and failure in marketing for the industry at large. And there are points of view from thirty-seven contributing sources here. “Miami Beach remains a fitting example of a leisure product that has been unable to get its act together,” Vladimir shares a view. “There are some first class hotels, a few good restaurants, alluring beaches, and a splendid convention center, but there is no synergism between them, no real affinity, and so while visitors admire the Fontainebleau Hilton and enjoy the food at Joe's Stone Crabs, the reputation of Miami Beach as a resort remains sullied,” the author makes a point. In describing cohesiveness between exclusive systems, Vladimir says, “If each system can get a better understanding of the inner workings of neighboring related systems, each will ultimately be more successful in achieving its goals.” The article is suggesting that exclusive systems aren’t really exclusive at all; or at least they shouldn’t be. In a word – competition – drives the market, and in order for a property to stay afloat, aggressive marketing integrated with all attendant resources is crucial. “Tisch [Preston Robert Tisch, currently – at the time of this writing - the Postmaster General of the United States and formerly president of Lowe’s Hotels and the New York Visitors and Convention Bureau], in talking about the need for aggressive marketing says: “Never...ever...take anything for granted. Never...not for a moment...think that any product or any place will survive strictly on its own merits.” Vladimir not only sources several knowledgeable representatives in the field of hospitality and tourism, but he also links elements as disparate as real estate, car rental, cruise and airlines, travel agencies and traveler profiles to illustrate his points on marketing integration. In closing, Vladimir quotes the Honorable Donna Tuttle, Undersecretary of Commerce for Travel and Tourism, “Uniting the components of this industry in an effective marketing coalition that can compete on an equal footing with often publicly-owned foreign tourism conglomerates and multi-national consortia must be a high priority as the United States struggles to maintain and expand its share of a rapidly changing global market.”

Airline Deregulation, Computerized Reservation Systems, and Travel Agents

With the beginning of airline deregulations in 1978, U.S. domestic operations were in for a period of turmoil, adjustment, vibrancy, entrepreneurship, and change. A great deal has been written about the effects of deregulation on airlines and their personnel, and on the public at large. Less attention has been paid to the effects on travel agents and on the seminal role of computerized reservations systems (CRSs) in the flowering of travel agencies. This article examines both of these phenomena.

Future Seniors and the Travel Industry

Persons over the age of 55 will soon comprise the majority of the travel industry. The impact of market size and potential is staggering. The author discusses the future senior travel market and provides recommendations for attracting and servicing this group.

Obesity and Air Travel: Weighing Up the Issues

It may soon be the norm for many airline passengers arriving at the check-in desk of any international airline with both stow- away and carry-on luggage to be asked to step onto the weighing scale as the airlines attempt to compete and remain operationally viable in what has become for most a cut-throat and highly litigious operating environment. The author's commentary seeks to highlight a number of the issues surrounding the current impasse. It is also intended to catalyze a more healthy and informed debate aimed at finding an acceptable resolution to this crisis prior to one being imposed which fails to satisfy the needs of either camp.

A Study of Online Hotel Reservations on Asia Pacific-Based, European-Based, and North American-Based Travel Websites

This paper reports a study that examined hotel reservation services on travel websites. Using a systematic search, 90 travel websites were selected with an equal number of North American-based, European-based, and Asia Pacfic-based websites. These regions represent the areas of the world with the most Internet users. Based on the developed framework of information quality, the contents of the selected travel websites were evaluated. Be empirical results indicated that the travel websites achieved different levels of quality in online information, and that North American-based websites performed significantly better in some attributes.

A New Vision: U.S Travel and Tourism Industry

Greg Farmer, U.S. Under Secretary of Commerce for Travel and Tourism, envisions a new proactive role for travel and tourism in the U.S. He has written this article especially for the FIU Hospitality Review.

Demographic, Behavioral and Perceptual Comparisons of U.S Visitor Experience with Group Package Tours and Free Independent Travel to China

U.S. visitor demand for the China travel experience is anticipated to rise significantly through 2105, causing the Chinese government to employ 100 million service providers over the next six years and raising concern about service delivery and perceptions of the on-site China experience. In an effort to better understand these issues concerning U.S. visitors, this study investigated two specific types of U.S. travelers to China: Group Package Tour (GPT) visitors and Free Independent Travel (FIT) visitors. Results indicated that GPT visitors were more likely to be older and have higher household income than FIT visitors. Four trip-related characteristics of GPT and FIT visitors were found to be significantly different, with GPT visitors showing higher levels of satisfaction with the overall China on-site travel experience.

Using the Involvement Construct to Understand the Motivations of Customers of Casual Dining Restaurants in the USA

The purpose of this study was to investigate the motivations that push consumers to dine out and restaurant attributes that pull diners to a specific restaurant. Surveys were administered to a convenience sample of 559 respondents at a large university in the Southwest of the USA. Crosstabs, ANOVA, Correlations, Factor Analysis and Multiple Regression were employed to explore differences and relationships between variables. Findings identified a profile of diners at casual restaurants. Using the involvement construct, the push-pull motivational framework, and the hedonic and utilitarian motivational framework, results of this study indicate two primary reasons behind the decision to dine out at casual restaurants and six principal attributes that draw customers into these types of restaurants. In addition, diners were categorized into high/medium/low involvement categories and the linkages between involvement levels and motivations were explored. Both hedonic and utilitarian motivations were identified. Furthermore, motivational factors and restaurant attributes were found to predict diner loyalty. This paper provides the restaurant industry with insight and understanding as to what attracts diners into an establishment and what influences decisions behind dining out.

Tourist See Tourist Do: The Influence of Hollywood Movies and Television on Tourism Motivation and Activity Behavior

The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of Hollywood movies and television (movies/TV) on US viewer’s motivation to travel to and participate in activities featured in Hollywood movies/TV productions. A survey was administered in an online format to a convenience sample of 433 respondents via Qualtrics. Factor analysis, correlation, and regression was employed to explore relationships between the variables. Findings identified a profile of Hollywood movies/TV viewers, sources of information used to determine destination choice, and level of involvement among viewers of Hollywood movies/TV productions. Additionally, this study explored the relationships between Hollywood movies/TV productions, tourist motivations, and the propensity to participate in activities featured. Findings indicate that Hollywood movies/TV productions have a positive impact on viewer involvement and that movie/TV related tourism is likely to be affected by movie and TV viewing preference and destination image. The results identify that the predictor “TV viewing behavior” is the strongest predictor of entertainmentmotivated tourism, followed by “destination image” and “movie viewing behavior.” Findings also indicate that “destination image” is the strongest predictor of movie-related activities and that the image portrayed in a movie does influence the viewer’s inclination to visit and participate in activities featured in a movie.

Díaz-Ayala Library Travel Grants Now Available [Announcement]

This flyer announces the Díaz-Ayala Library Travel Grants for Spring and Summer 2013.

Freeway Travel Time Estimation and Prediction Using Dynamic Neural Networks

Providing transportation system operators and travelers with accurate travel time information allows them to make more informed decisions, yielding benefits for individual travelers and for the entire transportation system. Most existing advanced traveler information systems (ATIS) and advanced traffic management systems (ATMS) use instantaneous travel time values estimated based on the current measurements, assuming that traffic conditions remain constant in the near future. For more effective applications, it has been proposed that ATIS and ATMS should use travel times predicted for short-term future conditions rather than instantaneous travel times measured or estimated for current conditions. This dissertation research investigates short-term freeway travel time prediction using Dynamic Neural Networks (DNN) based on traffic detector data collected by radar traffic detectors installed along a freeway corridor. DNN comprises a class of neural networks that are particularly suitable for predicting variables like travel time, but has not been adequately investigated for this purpose. Before this investigation, it was necessary to identifying methods for data imputation to account for missing data usually encountered when collecting data using traffic detectors. It was also necessary to identify a method to estimate the travel time on the freeway corridor based on data collected using point traffic detectors. A new travel time estimation method referred to as the Piecewise Constant Acceleration Based (PCAB) method was developed and compared with other methods reported in the literatures. The results show that one of the simple travel time estimation methods (the average speed method) can work as well as the PCAB method, and both of them out-perform other methods. This study also compared the travel time prediction performance of three different DNN topologies with different memory setups. The results show that one DNN topology (the time-delay neural networks) out-performs the other two DNN topologies for the investigated prediction problem. This topology also performs slightly better than the simple multilayer perceptron (MLP) neural network topology that has been used in a number of previous studies for travel time prediction.

Correspondence course for travel counsellors : hospitality industry project

The purpose of this paper is to produce a travel counselling course which could be subscribed to by students from Canada and abroad, which, upon completion, would qualify them to work in a travel agency.