ANALYSIS OF TRAVELERS' CHOICES ASSOCIATED WITH LEISURE TRIPS

Abstract

Leisure activities play a dominant role in our daily lives. The trips mainly depend upon the traveller's choices which are mainly the destination choice, mode choice, accommodation choice. Out of these choices, destination choice and mode choice plays a vital role. The factors affecting these two choices were explained by different authors. This study is taken up to discuss complex decision making process of leisure travel, role of factors in that and discuss importance of prediction of traveller's behaviours and preferences destination/mode/accommodation choice making with respect to different leisure travellers(purposed based). The main objectives of this study are to identification of influencing factors playing role at different levels of leisure travel decision making, formulation and standardization of survey questionnaire, appropriate for collecting data on specific leisure travel, exploding of leisure travellers' preferences and perceptions using various approaches and to recommend the best out of those approaches. Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) and Paper based questionnaire are prepared for the collection of leisure travel information. Personal interview survey is used to collect data from randomly chosen sample at the leisure place. The respondents were asked to give information about leisure travel details, perception data and household characteristics at the field survey. The data was collected in three different leisure locations like Delhi, Tirupati and Hyderabad. Both PDA based technique and paper questionnaire, are used for collection of information as per convenience of the respondent. Sample characteristics like travel, destination, accommodation and household characteristics are discussed in first stage analysis, whereas, perception based analysis are discussed in second stage. In the first stage analysis, among all the factors, respondents consider `Destination factor' as highly important. Scaling theory is used to find the scoring of different attributes. The results from this analysis iii showed that among social factors, presence of known persons is having more weight at locations Delhi and Hyderabad. At Tirupati the attribute budget available in hand for trip has got more weight. The destination factor climate of a place has more weight for location Delhi and at locations Tirupati and Hyderabad personal safety has more weight. The travel factor direct connectivity has more weight at location Delhi and at locations Tirupati and Hyderabad safety during travel has more weight. Among performance attributes, the attribute natural scenic beauty has got highest score at locations Delhi and Hyderabad. At location Tirupati culture of a place has got highest score. The factor analysis with principal component method also done to find the factor loadings of different attributes. The results showed that personal safety as the most important attribute when choosing a destination for leisure travel followed by safety during travel.