title: Sources and Channels of Tourism Information: An Exploratory Study of Travellers' Choice of Information Search Strategies
Creators: name: Gronflaten, Oyvind
Publisher: name: Griffith University
Year: 2005
Subjects: subject: Tourism information
subject: travel information
subject: tourism marketing

description: Any purchase of a tourism product requires some extent of information search on part of the consumer. Even for the simplest booking, the traveller must have information about prices, schedules, availabilities, suppliers, and transaction methods. For more complex holidays, information is needed for inspiration, planning, and execution of the trip. Because of the intricacies of the tourism product, communication in this industry is actively pursued by the customer, and it is essential for tourism marketers to make sure that the right kind of information is available at the right place at the right time. Achieving this precision in marketing communication is getting increasingly complicated as a result of an exponential growth in the amount of available information. Being two of the most dynamic industries in the world today, the concurrent expansion of tourism and information technology has increased both the number of information providers and the number of channels through which travellers may search for tourist information. One consequence of the information society is that it has become a huge challenge for marketers to compete for the attention of the consumer. A prerequisite for success in this competition is a thorough understanding of how these consumers choose between the various sources and channels of information available to them. This dissertation explores the reasons behind travellers’ choices of information search strategies. A search strategy is defined as the combination of an information source (provider of information) and an information channel (communication method), and it is argued that the two should be considered both separately and in combination when examining how travellers search for information. The results of this study indicate that the reasons for choosing an information source may be different from the reasons for choosing an information channel. When explaining why a search strategy is chosen, one should therefore distinguish between the choice of source and the choice of channel. When describing exactly how the traveller searches for information, however, better precision may be achieved by specifying which communication method is used to contact which information source. A combination of quantitative and qualitative techniques was used in the research. Initially, a number of reasons for choosing information sources and channels were identified through a series of in-depth interviews with international travellers. It was found that the choice of information search strategy could be neatly described by referring to characteristics associated with the information seeker (person), the source and channel (product), and the circumstances surrounding the information search (situation). Although a number of variables associated with the individual and the type of trip have been identified in previous research, these results indicate that product attributes and the particular search context also play major roles in travellers’ choice of search strategy. After identifying relevant choice factors through qualitative interviews, a quantitative survey was designed to explore the relationships between these factors and the choice of specific information search strategies. A model is presented in this dissertation that illustrates significant associations between various personal, product, and situational variables and the choice of information sources and channels. Finally, the variables identified in the study were used in a series of logistic regression analyses to predict the choice between pairs of sources, channels, and strategies. The choice between talking to travel agents face-to-face and contacting service providers through the Internet was used as an example to shed some light on the options usually considered in the disintermediation debate. It was found that the choice could be best predicted with knowledge of the traveller’s age, nationality, and travel style. The results also indicated that prediction improved when specifying a combination of a source and a channel rather than considering the two factors in isolation. In addition to providing some insight into the disintermediation issue, this dissertation may contribute both to the study and practice of tourism by challenging the way information search has traditionally been measured. A tourism information matrix is proposed as a way of describing various combinations of sources and channels that may be used by travellers when searching for information. The most important contribution, however, is an increased understanding of the multitude of factors that seem to influence tourist information search. This understanding is essential to provide the level of precision that is required in marketing communication today.