A review of family influences on travel decision making - Theory and Practice in Hospitality and Tourism Research - page 580

They studied both the influence of family mem-
bers and the decision structures in travel across
stages in the Family Life Cycles.

appropriate typology to measure, assess and moti-
vate families to travel (Hong, Fan & Palmer, 2005).
According to the study of family decision mak-
ing in Korea done by Kim, Choi, Agrusa, Wang
& Kim (2010), the decision making process of a
family is highly influenced by husband and wife,
whereas children follow their parent's decisions.
This may be true due to the Korean culture itself
where children are educated to obey their parents',
unlike in the west where children are free to give
their opinion. The fact that children are not given
voice in decision making process is problematic
since they are part of target customers in tourism
market (Blichfeldt, Pedersen, Johansen & Hansen,
2011). As assert by Illum (2013), the decision mak-
ing process in family institution may be influenced
by other family members' behaviour and the rise
of children involvement also plays an important
role in influencing adult decisions. These have been
neglected by most of researcher in their studies of
family tourist. The specific needs of tourists who
travel with families are frequently unmet because of
this major gap. In an effort to reflect more complex
realities of individual and family needs, this paper
proposed family-friendly services for industry busi-
ness's needs, which emphasize of marketing and
product development relative to FLC stages. Fam-
ily-friendly services play an important role in mak-
ing family travel more fun as well as influence their
decisions of travel arrangement. Family-friendly
services could consists of kids clubs, crèches (day
care centre, babysitting services), travelling nan-
nies (swimming instructor, sport coaches), family
travel packages (bundle or combined family serv-
ices), all inclusive hotels/resorts (packages of food,
dining, accommodation and activities), and five or
more family hotels/resorts (flexibility of adjoining
rooms) (Bohrer, 2011).

• Nichols & Snepenger (1988) examined family

decision making, tourism behavior, and attitude
of tourists specifically on three decisions making
mode, namely: husband-dominant, wife-dom-
inant and joint decision making. The finding
showed that there were differences between these
three groups where majority of the families
employed a joint decision making mode com-
pared to the other two modes.

• Fodness (1992) explored the impact of family

life cycles on family travel decision making. The
result shows that there is a joint decision making
process but the wife appears to be most likely
to make a decision in families with children
while husband only makes a decision in the early
stages where there is no presence of kids.
Even though there exists past studies of family
decision making over FLC, but the results raise a
number of plausible explanations that can be sub-
jected to further empirical research. For example, the
numbers of children's participation in the decision
making process is still below average. Moreover, it
can be said that there has been a revolution on the
tourism industry in conformity with the moderniza-
tion era. We foresee that there would be changes in
terms of the influence of different family members
at each FLC stages for families today as compared
to the decisions back in the 80's and 90's. To name
some of decision aspects that may differ because of
the time include: the nature of demand for travel
among families, product and services offered by
the industry players, government policies governing
tourism industry and destination development which
all opens up a new phase in the tourism industry. In
addition, the impacts of family in making decision
while travelling will affect in the ways in which it
shapes individual host and guest experiences. 2.3 Family life cycles

Lawson (1991) and Hong et al., (2005) posits that
family tourists decision making and behaviour can
be broken down into cycles known as the Family
Life Cycles (FLC). Hong et al., (2005) assert that
as individual preferences and the demands placed
on resources affected through the progress of FLC,
the presence or absence of a spouse, children and
their age. Although other variables can be prox-
ies than the FLC, integration of the FLC as one
of component in the model will captures some of
the relations of family influence in travel decision
making. FLC contains eight family cycles which are
bachelor, young couples, full nest I, full nest II, full
nest III, empty nest, elderly and solitary survivors.
These are then further categorizes into; 1) Bach-
elor: young adults, young singles. 2) Young couples:
newly married, no children. 3) Full nest I: young

2.2 Family influence in tourist decision making
Meanwhile, family could be a growing market seg-
ment which requires further understanding of the
needs and preferences of the family tourists. Fac-
tors such as different demographics and behav-
ioural characteristics of different family members
at different stage may have different effect of the
travel decision making and travelling outcomes.
Possible changes of life event and circumstances
that happen on individuals and families at different
stage of the FLC such as marriage, childbirth, death
of spouse, retirement etc. may affect family behav-
iour and travel motives based on their altered fam-
ily structure. With such a vast market to research,
tourism practitioners must understand and develop