Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
F.N. Osman
School of Graduate Studies, Universiti Putra Malaysia, Malaysia
H. Hashim, H. Nezakati, S.R. Hussin & Y.A. Aziz
Faculty of Economics and Management, Universiti Putra Malaysia, Malaysia
R.N. Raja-Yusof
Putra Business School, Universiti Putra Malaysia, Malaysia
ABSTRACT: Worldwide, there are an increasing number of tourists travelling abroad together as a
family, with family members ranging from 3 to 7 persons, and 3 to 50 years of age. These groups of family
tourists have illustrated some unique needs which entail further investigation if industry players were to
meet and satisfy their needs more effectively. This paper reviews the existing literature on family decision
making, paying attention to specific requirements of family needs while travelling. Specific needs of this
type of tourists include children-friendly menus, kids clubs, family travel packages, family-friendly envi-
ronment, and wellness facilities for family members of different age groups etc. The paper reviews existing
tourism typologies and concluded that there is a need to develop a new typology for family tourists. This
paper proposes three new dimensions for tourist typologies, i.e. cultural-influence (religion), customer
characteristic (stage in family life cycle) and destination services (family-friendly facilities).
Keywords
:
Family decision making, family life cycles, tourist typology, travel decision
1 INTRODUCTION
arrival, Malaysia is now adding more destination
attraction and facilities that would cater to the
need of various groups of tourists all over Malay-
sia. Apparent example can be found in Iskandar
Malaysia, where the expected arrival of family
tourist is encouraging to places such as Johor Pre-
mium Outlet, LEGOLAND Theme Park, Puteri
Harbour Theme Park, Sanrio Hello Kitty Town
and Lat's Place (NSTP, 2014).
Tourism is a world-wide socio-economic phe-
nomenon and evolved from developing sectors of
world's economy in the past period to emerging
sectors in the 21st century. The growth of tourism
is an outcome of many factors such as changing
of lifestyles, gaining new interests, the growth of
income and leisure time, improvement of accessi-
bility and accommodation, and new offer in tour-
ism market (Coccossis & Contantoglou, 2006).
According to World Tourism Barometer, interna-
tional tourist arrivals grew by 5 percent in 2013 and
reaching a record of 1,087 million arrivals. In 2014,
a 4 percent to 4.5 percent growth was forecasted
above the long term projections while demand for
international tourism for destinations in Asia and
the Pacific are strongest in regional prospect by 5
percent to 6 percent growth where the number of
international tourists grew by 14 million to reach
248 million (UNTWO, 2014). Meanwhile, tour-
ism industry in Malaysia is expected to contrib-
ute 12.5 percent to the GDP in 2014, a 12 percent
increase from 2011 (Malaysia Travel News, 2014).
An interesting development in the tourism indus-
try is the growth of tourists travel with their family
worldwide. To complement the increase in tourists'
2 LITERATURE
2.1
Early studies in family decision making
Past research examined family role in decision
making process. These are summarized as below:
•
Jenkins (1978) investigated the vacation decision
process for families where it was found that the
husband and wife are dominant in influencing
vacations decision, while children did not have
considerable influences in deciding upon the
kinds of vacation activities for the family.
•
Cosenza & Davis (1981) focused on dyadic fam-
ily (husband and wife) as the primary unit of
analysis and measured dominance as character-
istics of interaction between married partners.
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