Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
23
Tourist destination choice
A review and critical evaluation
of preference estimation methods
in tourism marketing research
Chunxiao Li
Since tourists' decision-making is a quite complicated mental process, it has been a challenge for
tourism scholars to fi nd out how to investigate this abstract object and to apply research methods
satisfactorily. There have been all kinds of quantitative and qualitative research methods adopted
to understand tourists' decision-making. As a matter of fact, different perspectives on this
interesting topic require different instruments. In order to understand the critical implications of
these studies for wider tourism marketing, as well as to understand which method is most
appropriate for different circumstances or research questions, it is important for us to have a clear
understanding about what kinds of methods are available, what functions these methods serve
and what goals can be achieved through each method.
However, there are few reviews of decision-making approaches in tourism that focus on the
debates surrounding research approach and methods, either in terms of a critical analysis of
the methods used to measure tourists' decision-making behaviour or in terms of propositions
for methodological development. This chapter tries to address this gap with a review and
analysis of the existing estimation methods applied to tourists' decision-making and a
consideration of some possible new estimation methods, which are emerging in recent studies
on tourism decision-making. Since other chapters in this handbook deal with theoretical issues
in tourist decision-making, the current focus is entirely on the estimation methods of tourists'
preferences in destination choice behaviour.
Although the process of tourists' destination choice can be very complex, there is one area of
agreement amongst scholars, and that is that destinations are chosen based on certain criteria,
which are set by tourists according to their own preferences. Moreover, tourism destinations
are different from manufactured products because they consist of a range of intangible and
tangible attributes and features, including social, cultural and environmental resources. Thus,
the utility perceived by tourists is derived from different parts or attributes of this amalgamation
of destination resources. Generally tourists' evaluations of destinations are based on the relative
importance they attach to different attributes in their established criteria.
