Past Consumers' Travel Decisions
- jbmehan29
- Oct 1, 2018
- 3 min read
Updated: Nov 22, 2019
How Did Past Consumers Make Their Travel Decisions?
Over the years, many environmental and societal factors have caused industries to evolve; the travel industry is no exception. How consumers currently make their travel decisions vary greatly from how many consumers made their decisions in the past.
In the past, consumers typically based their travel decisions on three things: advice from their friends and family, their habits, and information they found in travel magazines.
The article “Information Sources Used By Older Adults for Decision Making about Tourist and Travel Destinations” states that “for older people, the most important sources of information about where, how and when to visit are primarily through personal sources, such as family and friends” (Patterson, 2007, p. 532) and that “feature stories in magazines, newspapers and television documentaries were also found to be popular” (Patterson, 2007, p. 532).
This implies that in the past, consumers relied on credible sources in order to make their travel decisions. Past consumers relied on people with whom they were close; they needed an opinion that they could trust. In addition, past consumers relied on established travel magazines, which suggests that they made their travel decisions based off of valid information.
This is vastly different from today, as most of the population relies on information from strangers found on social media. Today, people rely on social influencers and the media to tell them where they should travel, but in the past, “paid advertisements in the mass media were rated lower in importance in influencing older people’s decisions about holiday destinations” (Patterson, 2007, p. 532). It's interesting to see just how much the travel industry has evolved.
The article “Travel Decisions Based on Habit” suggests that habit was another driving force in past consumers' travel decisions. Essentially, past consumers' travel decisions “become automatic responses to specific situations” (Bjork & Jansson, 2008, p.16). This implies that the media did not influence consumers’ travel decisions, their own previous actions did.
Specifically, the study states that “the most habitual sub-decision is "when to go" (2,945) followed by "where to go" (3,066) and "what to do" (3,315)” (Bjork & Jansson, 2008, p. 23). Therefore, past consumers’ decided when to travel, where to travel, and what to do when traveling based based on their past travel choices.
Many current consumers do not travel based on habit. Instead, social media and travel influencers are prompting consumers to 'step out of their comfort zone' while traveling, a concept which is drastically different from how the previous generation traveled.
Lastly, the article “How Photos in Travel Magazine Impact Where We Travel” suggests that “the enhanced interest and the perceived helpfulness of the magazine had a strong effect on tourism decision making. The feature stories in the magazine had a significant contribution to increasing the interest of the audience and on perceived helpfulness of the magazine” (Lee & Andereck, 2016, p.4).
Similarly to what has been previously mentioned, this implies that past consumers based their travel decisions off of reliable travel sources. Current consumers turn to social media and social media influencers for travel information, and they typically pay much less attention to travel magazines. In fact, some may say that travel magazines are unable to influence travelers in the same way that they used to. It's amazing to see how the travel industry has done a '180'; consumers are not as concerned with where their travel information is coming from, they are concerned with how pretty their potential travel destinations look on Instagram.
Overall, consumers used to make their travel decisions based off of advice from their friends and family, their habits ,and information they found from travel magazines. Based on these three aspects alone, a person can tell that much as changed; now, social media, and more specifically, travel influencers, dictate where, when, and how people travel.
Sources
Bjork, P., & Jansson, T. (2008). Travel Decision-making: The Role of Habit. Munich Personal
RePEc Archive, 3. Retrieved from
Lee, W., & Andereck, K. (2010). The Effect of Travel Magazine Features and Photos on Tourist
Decision Making. University of Massachusetts Amherst. Retrieved from
Patterson, I. (2007). Information Sources Used By Older Adults for Decision Making about
Tourist and Travel Destinations. ResearchGate, 31. Retrieved from
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