key: cord-1046116-fmsa7ket authors: Ng, Eric; Cassidy, Frances; Brown, Les title: Exploring the Major Factors Influencing Consumer Selection of Travel Agencies in a Regional Setting date: 2006-04-30 journal: Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management DOI: 10.1375/jhtm.13.1.75 sha: 83eaa2f75251e0ef105dd3922dc498012e4a7d0a doc_id: 1046116 cord_uid: fmsa7ket The research reported in this article explores why consumers choose to book their travel arrangements with travel agencies in regional settings. Consumers can now access online bookings for airlines, accommodation, transportation, sightseeing tours and other related products, so why do they still go to travel agencies for reservations? This article identifies the attributes consumers seek in a travel agency or consultant and determines the relative importance of these in their selection process. The research was conducted in two stages. The first stage was a series of in-depth interviews with 10 travel agency users and three travel consultants. The second stage was a mail-out survey of 400 users of travel agencies in the Darling Downs area of Queensland, Australia. Despite its regionality, the region is a significant consumer of travel with approximately eight agencies in the city of Toowoomba alone. The in-depth interviews highlighted the need to de-emphasise two particular agency attributes, agency promotion and adequate brochure provision, from the research questions and replace these with parking and travel reward programs as factors worthy of investigation. Survey results revealed that there were 12 significant attributes impacting on consumer selection and, of these, the most important were the knowledge and experience of consultants, and the helpfulness and friendliness of consultants. Of particular note was that these attributes related to the consultant and not the agency per se. Travel reward programs were seen as the least influential in this research. The number of Australian residents travelling both domestically and internationally has increased substantially in recent years. In the year 2002, Australians spent approximately 298.7 million nights (defined by the Australian Bureau of Statistics as nights spent away from home in association with individual visits; Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2006) domestically, which was an increase of 3.1% over the previous year of 289.6 million nights (Department of Industry, Tourism and Resources, 2004) . By contrast, in the year 2002, Australians travelling overseas had reached a record high of 3.46 million, which accounted for an increase of 0.5% on the year 2001 (Department of Industry, Tourism and Resources, 2004) . However, the impact of the terrorist attacks on the London transport system, World Trade Centre in New York, the demise of Ansett Airlines Australia, the Bali attack and the sudden severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) outbreak have contributed to a decline in both domestic and international travellers. This was particularly evident with 294.1 million nights spent by Australians travelling domestically in the year 2003, which represented a decrease of 1.5% when compared to 298.7 million nights in 2002. Only 3.38 million Australians travelled overseas in 2003, which signified a decrease of 2.1% on the year 2002 (Department of Industry, Tourism and Resources, 2004) . The use of online search facilities for travel information has provided additional sources of information and opportunities to purchase travel direct from suppliers, such as airlines and accommodation providers, without recourse to travel agents (Buhalis, 1998) . In some instances, such purchases can be made at discounts to prices available through travel agencies by eliminating commissions for such agents (example such as the Flight Centre). Furthermore, the capacity of the internet to promote and provide information very conveniently and quickly has provided alternatives to physical visits by consumers to travel agencies in order to access such information (Buhalis, 1998) . However, there is an apparent lack of research into the effects of such changes in the industry, particularly in the Australian regional context, and about the factors that drive consumer selection of travel agencies and if these pose a threat to existing travel agencies. If there is such a threat, then the research findings should assist conventional travel agencies in identifying the major factors influencing consumers' selection of travel agencies in regional settings. Hence, the research in this article seeks to identify the major factors driving consumers' selection of travel agencies in a regional setting and the results determine their relative importance. This enables travel agencies to make decisions about countering threats from specialist online providers and to win back travel consumers by better positioning themselves in the marketplace. This article begins by reviewing the literature relevant to the research issue and then discusses the methodology, including the data collection techniques used in researching this issue. Next, the analysis of data is described and then the findings presented. These are followed by the conclusions drawn from the research, the implications and finally suggestions for further research are drawn. A travel agency is regarded as a firm qualified to arrange for travel-related retail services (such as hotel rooms, meals, transportation, cruises, tours, and other travel requirements) on behalf of various tourism industry principals (Goldblatt & Nelson, 2001) . A review of the current literature shows that there are only limited studies on travel agencies in a regional context, which is the focus of this article. Yet, travel agencies have been regarded as critical information and planning or booking providers for a large number of travellers (Buhalis, 1998; Buhalis & Deimezi, 2003; Duke & Persia, 1993; Mihalik, Uysal, & Pan, 1995) . Other studies have also investigated several different aspects of travel agencies, such as information technology needs (Bennett, 1993; Buhalis, 1998; Buhalis & Deimezi, 2003) , travel agent's role in family decision-making (Michie & Sullivan, 1990) , advertising strategies (Laskey, Seaton, & Nicholls, 1994) , the more effective use of relationship marketing (Bennett, 1993; Richter, 1996) and the selection attributes of travel agencies (Buhalis, 1998; Meidan, 1979; Persia & Gitelson, 1993; Oppermann, 1998) . However, very few studies have been carried out in Australia, particularly in the south-east Queensland region, which is the key focus of this article. Based on the literature, a comprehensive list of attributes (Figure 1 ) was developed and derived from previous studies by Persia and Gitelson (1993) , Meidan (1979) and Buhalis (1998) who had extensively reviewed a wide range of different studies on selection attributes of travel agencies. The literature suggested that additional services (such as visa handling and travel insurance) have been advertised as one of the key factors that differentiate one travel agency from another (Persia & Gitelson, 1993) . This attribute was important, particularly in the travel agency business, since it is a common belief that customers from a competitor can be won over if an attractive list of free 'extras' is offered (Persia & Gitelson, 1993) . Agency advertisement, knowledgeable and experienced travel consultants, and sufficient brochures were important to consumers where they could consider the use of such information, opinions and suggestions provided to evaluate alternatives prior to making the purchase (Bellur, McNamara, & Prokop, 1988; Buhalis, 1998; Gitelson & Crompton, 1983; Joint Travel Agent/Airline Economic and Value Study, 1978) . The increasing public media attention and unsettling world events (such as the London transport system, the Bali attack and the sudden SARS outbreak) contributed to major financial uncertainties for tour operators and travel agencies, which resulted in a need for consumers to evaluate the travel agency's reputation as part of their selection process (Persia & Gitelson, 1993) . The findings in several studies conducted (for example, Kendall & Booms, 1989; Meidan, 1979) revealed that the physical aspects of agency (i.e., agency layout and atmosphere, convenient location and trading hours/days) were regarded as a fundamental concern of travel agency users. The demand for holidays was considered to be 'price-elastic' and therefore the holiday/package price could possibly determine a consumer's choice of travel agency (Meidan, 1979) . Quality and variety of holiday/travel packages were recognised as one of the most important selling points in the travel agency business and consumers could be potentially looking for such attributes in selecting their choice of a travel agency (Meidan, 1979) . Finally, in the serviceoriented travel agency business, helpful and friendly staff could be central to the success of the transaction where integrating consumers' participation becomes part of the process of delivering the outcome (Meidan, 1979; Persia & Gitelson, 1993 ). The methodology adopted in this research project was designed primarily to overcome a lack of prior research directly related to the research problem. Due to an apparent absence of research literature about travel agencies operating in regional settings and the consequent absence of empirically tested models, it was deemed necessary to develop propositions about the research issues. Therefore a two-stage process was adopted; first interviews with key stakeholders among travel agencies in the regional Australia were conducted in order to test the relevance of the current literature about consumer selection of travel agencies in regional settings, but also to identify other issues that may be specific to travel agencies in such settings. In the second stage, a mail-out survey using information gleaned from the first stage was conducted. The adoption of in-depth interviews in this stage of the research was based on two grounds: collecting interview data and the need for flexibility. First, in-depth interviews are regarded as one of the more appropriate techniques in exploratory research for collecting inductive data and, since knowledge and understanding in this research area is limited, this is an appropriate technique (DeCarlo, Binson, Ekstrand, & Sanstad, 1998; Minichiello, Aroni, Timewell, & Alexander, 1995) . This technique not only allows the interviewer to gather preliminary information about the research topic but, more specifically, to gain insights and understanding regarding the research objectives (Jones, 1985; Kumar, 1996) . Second, in-depth inter-views also provide the flexibility to allow the interviewer to modify, drop or add propositions in response to evidence from the interviewees, particularly in relation to factors that influence the selection of a travel agency (Jones, 1985; Minichiello et al., 1995) . Thus, the interviewer is able to acquire a more valuable outcome through the use of this technique. This stage of the research process comprised 13 in-depth interviews, of which 10 were conducted with travel agency users and three were with travel consultants. The selection of these 13 interviewees was based on convenience judgment sampling, where interviewees were chosen through personal contacts or references from peers or colleagues (Malhotra, 1996; Patton, 1990) . These interviewees were invited to share their experiences, opinions and attitudes to address the following objectives, as well as to seek additional insights from interviewees: • to check the relevance of the current literature about the research issue in the Australian regional context • identify and evaluate attributes which existing travel agencies need to develop in order to retain existing customers and attract new customers. The interviews were semistructured in nature so that the discussion was flexible and informal, thereby allowing the interviewer to gain an in-depth understanding of the topic and achieve the aforementioned objectives. Stage two of the research was conducted in the form of a mail-out questionnaire and was justified on two bases: geographical stratification and anonymity. First, this research had a target sample population that was widely dispersed in the metropolitan area and surrounding region of the Darling Downs. Thus, it was more cost effective and efficient to administer the questionnaire by mail. Second, for reasons of confidentiality and privacy, respondents could remain anonymous through this mail administration process since they could not be matched to those questionnaires they had completed (American Statistical Association, 1997). Although a lower response rate is a major disadvantage of using the mail-out questionnaire, this issue was addressed by prior telephone screening for interested participants for the mail survey. The use of a well-designed questionnaire and incentives were offered, to ensure that a higher response rate would be achieved. The mail-out questionnaire was distributed to 400 travel agency users to further investigate those attributes identified in the in-depth interviews and the literature. Respondents were randomly selected from a local travel agency's database as well as the local telephone book. The survey instrument was a self-administered questionnaire distributed by the researcher after it was pretested with 10 respondents. Some minor changes were made to the questionnaire prior to mailout. The questionnaires were returned via a reply paid envelope. Survey questions were aimed at providing data on the following research objectives: • to identify the attributes by which travel agency users evaluate travel agencies • to determine the relative importance of attributes used in the selection of a travel agency. This research achieved a response rate of approximately 54% with 217 usable responses out of a possible 400. This research utilised the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) software program, in particular the use of nonparametric techniques (such as the chi-square test and Wilcoxon signedranked test) to conduct the analysis. The justification for the use of nonparametric relates to the small sample size and the fact that normality was not established in the population distribution (Krebs, 1989) . Each of these data analysis techniques is now described. The chi-square test was used to determine if differences in frequency exist across response categories (Coakes & Steed, 2003) . In this research, this test was used to analyse the respondents' demographic profiles and determine if there were any significant differences between these demographic variables (such as gender, age group and household income) in response to the selection attributes. Additionally, the Wilcoxon signed-ranked test was used to test the magnitude of difference between a pair of selection attributes where an alpha value indicating less than .05 denotes significant difference between the attributes (Coakes & Steed, 2003) . Frequency distribution was also used to analyse the demographic and selection attributes data. Cross-tabulation reveals a more concise portrayal of the data captured. Based on the findings of the in-depth interviews, some changes to the preliminary model were identified. Two attributes (agency advertisement and sufficient brochures provided) could possibly be omitted from the model since they were not mentioned by any of the in-depth interview respondents. Two additional attributes (parking and travel reward programs) could be included in the model for further investigation in the second stage of the research as they were mentioned by more than 50% of respondents. These attributes highlighted in the in-depth interviews were then used in stage 2 of this research to determine their relative importance in the selection of a travel agency in a regional context. The second stage of the research achieved a response rate of approximately 54% with 217 responses received from a total of 400 surveys that were distributed. The respondents were predominantly more female (63.6%) than male (36.4%) with the majority of them married (64%) and reported as having no dependents (approximately 60%) in their household. The age groups and qualifications obtained in the responses were evenly spread across their respective categories, except for the under 24 years age group, where it registered only 10% of the responses. The annual household income groups were also relatively wide and evenly spread in the responses with only 3% of the sample indicating earnings of above $100,000. Table 1 provides a brief summary of the demographic profiles of the respondents. The survey investigated the 12 attributes -knowledgeable and experienced travel consultants, helpful and friendly staff, holiday/package price, quality of travel packages, travel agency reputation, variety of holiday/tour packages, additional services, convenient location, trading hours/days, agency layout and atmosphere, parking and travel reward programs -as identified in the in-depth interview stage. The findings indicated that knowledgeable and experienced travel consultants and travel reward programs as being the most and least important selection attributes respectively (refer to Table 2 for the frequency distribution of the selection attributes). The most influential attribute used in the selection of a travel agency was knowledgeable and experienced travel consultants, which was supported by majority of the respondents (213 respondents out of a possible of 217 which equates to approximately 98%). This attribute was seen as critical by these respondents (with a mean score of 4.52 out of a possible 5) as they believed that knowledgeable and experienced travel consultants could better assist them in making appropriate decisions on the travel itinerary and packages they sought. This could contribute positively towards their overall travel experiences and achieve postpurchase satisfaction, which could lead to subsequent repeat purchases (Kotler, 2003) . Travel reward program was identified as the least important attribute by the respondents (about 36%, with a mean score of 2.37 out of a possible 5) when selecting a travel agency in a regional context. These respondents suggested that this attribute was not the key driving force in determining their choice of travel agency, but rather as an insignificant associated incentive. Table 3 briefly illustrates the relative importance of the various attributes used to select a travel agency in a regional context. Generally, respondents were consistent in their responses to the importance of the different attributes when selecting their travel agency. However, findings show that there were notable significant differences between some selection attributes as indicated in Table 3 , column 3. Furthermore, there were also notable differences between gender group (such as helpful and friendly staff, travel agency reputation and additional services), age group (such as quality of travel packages, travel agency reputation, additional services, convenient location, agency layout and atmosphere and parking), and household income group (such as holiday/package price, quality of travel packages, travel agency reputation and additional services). Tables 4, 5 and 6 briefly illustrate the differences in these respective groups. The variation can be explained by respondents' level of travel experiences as a whole and also their attitudes towards travel agencies. In conclusion, this article has investigated 12 major factors influencing consumers' choice of travel agencies in a regional setting. The survey results revealed that knowledgeable and experienced travel consultants were the most important factor in selecting a travel agency, while travel reward programs were seen as the least influential in the selection process. From the findings, it appeared that while the future of travel agencies may be contentious given the introduction of the internet technology, it seemed that the competitive advantage that travel agencies enjoy is the 'human' element (Buhalis, 1998) . Table 3 highlighted the relative importance of those influencing factors and provided consumers with a list of attributes which they could use in their selection of a travel agency. From this study, consumers are able to consider and question the relevance of these criteria and determine the essential factors that require consideration during their selection process. This study investigated only the Darling Downs region in Queensland, Australia, and therefore the findings could not be generalised to the population at large. A more representative sampling population should be sought to generalise the findings and be tested in another Australian regional setting. The findings from this study could be further investigated in a business organisation context where comparisons to the findings could be made to determine if there are any significant differences between individual consumers and business organisations on the factors influencing the selection of travel agencies in regional settings. Furthermore, the attitude of customers who do not walk through the door (example via the internet) could also be explored, to determine if any differences existed between traditional 'walk in' customers and 'techno savvy' customers who generally make online bookings, when selecting travel agencies. 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