Independent Travel Research Articles

Self-tourism as an Alternative to Organized Tourism: Benefits, Challenges, Threats

The article is devoted to the consideration of socio-economic backgrounds of the emergence and spreading of independent travel, the main trends in changing of the demands and expectations of tomorrow’s tourists. The purpose of this work is to study the main tendencies in independent travel, the advantages of independent travel over organized tours and excursions, to identify the main challenges and threats to travelers on their own. It has been proved that the main objective factor that influenced the rapid development of the independent tourism is a widespread introduction of information technologies and telecommunications. It has been determined that independent travels have certain advantages over organized tours; it is focused on the challenges and threats of independent travel. The trend of the rapid growth of the number of independent travels around the world has been confirmed statistically.

Tourist Potential of Slovakia: Realized Opportunities, Prospects of Increasing the Efficiency of Use

The article is devoted to the consideration of the current state of tourism potential in Slovakia and analysis of opportunities to increase its efficiency for the development of the tourist market of the country. Analysis of the tourist potential of Slovakia showed that the industry is rapidly developing due to the presence of unique natural recreational, historical and cultural resources in the country. However, due to insufficiently high level of service, undeveloped tourism infrastructure, the country is not able to realize its potential. In order to achieve higher growth rates in the tourism industry, Slovakia needs to realize a set of long-term and short-term goals, identify key markets, adapt the tourist product to world-class, stabilize the tourism market and get new markets for existing tourist products. In order to reveal the topic, a number of techniques used for geographic and economic sciences are used: methods of analysis, systematic, dialectical, economic-comparative, geographic-economic. The purpose of this work is to explore the tourism potential of Slovakia and to determine the possibilities of increasing its efficiency in building the tourism market of the country. It is shown that individual programs of the tourist market development of the country have been successfully implemented successfully today. Thanks to the public-private partnership, the country has created quite favorable conditions for the development of both organized international and domestic tourism, as well as for independent travel. According to the tourism development rating, Slovakia is an absolute leader on such indicators as the gross domestic product per capita, the share of tourism in GDP, the number of foreign tourist trips, as well as the place in the competitiveness rating of the tourism sector of the country. Based on the research conducted on the effectiveness of the country's tourism potential, a SWOT-analysis of the tourism industry was carried out.

Children's independent travel to and from primary school: Evidence from a suburban town in Germany

The paper studies the factors that contribute to understand children's independent travel – i.e. not being escorted by an adult – to and from primary school in Germany. Binary logit regression is employed, and the data used are taken from a survey among parents of children in seven schools in a medium-sized suburban town. This is the first paper from Germany that simultaneously looks at the full range of dimensions that may help understand children's independent travel: (1) trip characteristics, (2) child characteristics, (3) the household context, (4) subjective concerns, attitudes and perceptions, (5) the transport environment, (6) the built environment and (7) the social environment. In contrast to the majority of studies in the field, an attempt was made to capture a holistic picture of the transport and land-use environment along the route, while at the same time some key attributes of the route were used as separate variables. Perhaps the most notable contribution to research is the distinct differences that we found between outward and return trips. While the morning trip was characterised by distinct impacts of the built and transport environment, most variables turned out insignificant in the afternoon model. Conversely, more attitudinal dimensions turned out significant in the return trip. Some of our findings are clearly relevant for policy. For instance, traffic calming is associated with higher levels of independent travel, while routes characterised by industry and trade, high-speed roads, and zebra-crossings that need to be crossed are associated with lower levels of independent travel. The effects of perceptions and attitudes we find can be taken as starting points for soft policies such as awareness campaigns or traffic education.

Establishment of an effective enterprise in the touristic market

In this paper, the authors describe the creation of an effective enterprise in the field of tourism. In order to create an effective tourist agency, it is necessary to understand the mechanism of the tourism market in general and the role of travel agencies and tour operators, in particular. Business in the tourism industry is fairly good because it is possible to open a tourist agency with the least investment and without the experience of such activities. This activity is not licensed in any way, and there is no need for permits for this reason. At the same time, competition in the tourism business is quite high, and the need for servicing travel agencies in the circumstances of the crisis naturally decreases. It is necessary to choose the direction of activity being guided by one's own interests, skills of hired personnel or general market trends. Then you need to choose one of the development models (independent travel agency, travel agency based at home, franchise or online travel agency). You can consider already later the registration aspects, organization of your office, software, the creation of a website, the selection of employees and partners, tour operators, as well as advertising. It is also necessary to choose the direction of activity being guided by one's own interests, skills of hired personnel or general market trends. It is necessary to attract buyers with high-quality service, to cooperate only with reliable tour operators - to form an image that will in future become functional for you.

Independent Mobility and Social Affordances of Places for Urban Neighborhoods: A Youth-Friendly Perspective.

Meaning of place is usually approached as slow social cognitive construction. However, grounded on the theory of affordances, it may also stem from direct perception-action processes, which enable the formation of immediate perceived functional, social or symbolic meaning of place (Raymond et al., 2017b). In the present study, affordances of places, which are perceived by a specific perceiver in a specific place, were mapped using a web-map survey. Each place offers opportunities for interaction, behavior, use, feeling or meaning, which is directly perceived and actualized there. This paper aims at identifying the degree of youth-friendliness of urban neighborhoods using the hypothetical intertwined model of independent mobility and actualized affordances (Kyttä, 2004) combined with place use and meaning (Broberg et al., 2013a). SoftGISchildren methodology (Broberg et al., 2013a) was adopted to carry out a cross-sectional research, involving 145 sixth to ninth graders of the Great Lisbon area. SoftGIS integrates Public Participation Geographic Information Systems (PPGIS), enabling collection and place mapping of daily subjective environmental experiences in the physical environment, consequently allowing for individuals to be actively engaged in public processes of participation (Brown and Kyttä, 2014). A place based web survey called “Ideal City: a game of graphic imagination” was adopted. Participants were asked to map their home place, select and mark social, functional, leisure and emotional place transactions, and report actual and ideal mobility to these places. Findings on mobility showed that shorter distances to meaningful affordances of places promote active and independent travel; ideally, youths would like to be more frequently active and more frequently autonomous. As for meaningful places, a total of 1632 affordances were localized, with a higher number on social category. Neighborhood area (500 m around home place) was assessed as youth-friendly, where active and independent travel occurred more frequently, and social affordances were the most expressive type. Relational and affectional experience in the neighborhood places was meaningful for youth. Municipalities should consider these features when planning, designing and managing residential areas aiming for the well-being and health of young citizens; and include youths as specialists of space (spatialists) in planning participatory processes (PPGIS).

Children's Independent Mobility: Current Knowledge, Future Directions, and Public Health Implications.

Environmental changes significantly impact health behavior. Active travel behavior is mostly affected by increasing motorization, urban sprawl, and traffic safety. Especially for children, active and independent travel can contribute to physical activity, social and motor development, and other health-related outcomes. A reduced number of children engaging in independent mobility over the last 20 years demanded researchers to further examine the construct of children’s independent mobility. By examining relevant literature, this narrative review aims to provide the current state of knowledge on children’s independent mobility, and identify future directions in research, as well as practical implications. From a public health perspective, considering children’s independent mobility in intervention programs is recommended, since it is associated with numerous health and environmental benefits. To develop interventions, multilevel socio-ecological influences on children’s independent mobility are widely examined; however, evidence is limited due to heterogeneous measurements and a lack of high-quality prospective studies. To oppose the decline in children’s independent mobility, further analysis using comparable measures is needed to understand the determinants of children’s independent mobility and to enable international comparison.

Social media and mobility landscape: Uncovering spatial patterns of urban human mobility with multi source data

In this paper, we present a three-step methodological framework, including location identification, bias modification, and out-of-sample validation, so as to promote human mobility analysis with social media data. More specifically, we propose ways of identifying personal activity-specific places and commuting patterns in Beijing, China, based on Weibo (China's Twitter) check-in records, as well as modifying sample bias of check-in data with population synthesis technique. An independent citywide travel logistic survey is used as the benchmark for validating the results. Obvious differences are discerned from Weibo users' and survey respondents' activity-mobility patterns, while there is a large variation of population representativeness between data from the two sources. After bias modification, the similarity coefficient between commuting distance distributions of Weibo data and survey observations increases substantially from 23% to 63%. Synthetic data proves to be a satisfactory cost-effective alternative source of mobility information. The proposed framework can inform many applications related to human mobility, ranging from transportation, through urban planning to transport emission modelling.

Risk-Averse Selfish Routing

We consider a nonatomic selfish routing model with independent stochastic travel times for each edge, represented by mean and variance latency functions that depend on edge flows. This model can ap...

Profiling UAE Youth Travel: Application of Push and Pull Theory

Youth in the GCC countries have higher economic resources compared to their peers in other areas of the world. Existing studies have mainly focused on American, European and Asian youth travelers with different cultural background, preferences and behavior from Arab youth. In response to the emerging youth travel market in the rich GCC countries, this study sets out to fill the gap in research in this regard. The purpose of the study is to highlight the main factors that motivate Emirati youth to travel, the main information resources they use and their tendency to purchase packaged tours. The study applied the push and pull motivational theory to define the most significant UAE youth travel motives. A quantitative web-based survey was used to collect the required data. The findings of this study have proved that pull factors are more significant determinants for UAE youth travel than the push factors. Besides, it was revealed that the majority of UAE youth depend on the internet for travel information. Finally, the study finding shows that UAE youth prefer independent travel over packaged trips. The findings of the study have many implications for tourism suppliers and marketers who wish to target this lucrative market.

The impact of functional vision changes on independent travel for individuals with adult-onset visual impairment

The impact of functional vision changes on independent travel for individuals with adult-onset visual impairment

Vision-based Mobile Indoor Assistive Navigation Aid for Blind People.

This paper presents a new holistic vision-based mobile assistive navigation system to help blind and visually impaired people with indoor independent travel. The system detects dynamic obstacles and adjusts path planning in real-time to improve navigation safety. First, we develop an indoor map editor to parse geometric information from architectural models and generate a semantic map consisting of a global 2D traversable grid map layer and context-aware layers. By leveraging the visual positioning service (VPS) within the Google Tango device, we design a map alignment algorithm to bridge the visual area description file (ADF) and semantic map to achieve semantic localization. Using the on-board RGB-D camera, we develop an efficient obstacle detection and avoidance approach based on a time-stamped map Kalman filter (TSM-KF) algorithm. A multi-modal human-machine interface (HMI) is designed with speech-audio interaction and robust haptic interaction through an electronic SmartCane. Finally, field experiments by blindfolded and blind subjects demonstrate that the proposed system provides an effective tool to help blind individuals with indoor navigation and wayfinding.

Investigating the barriers in a typical journey by public transport users with disabilities

Accessibility to public transport is increasingly recognized as a critical element in the livelihoods of people with disabilities. Although there have been advancements to better cater for the needs of people with disabilities, budgetary constraints mean that every issue cannot be addressed. There are still many barriers restricting independent travel for this group of people. Social exclusion is often a result of their inability to use or access a public transport system. The present study investigates the barriers in a typical journey chain and provides the similarities and differences in the key barriers perceived by people with physical and visual impairments. Participants volunteered from cities in New Zealand. A semi-structured interview was conducted with a sample of people with disabilities. Bus driver's attitude and unawareness of disabled users’ needs was a common concern for both groups. The main barriers for physically impaired users were related to the urban environment, terminals and stops, services, and quality of footpaths. In comparison, the main barriers for visually impaired users were poor presentation of information, and obstructions on footpaths. Based on the findings, the study provides recommendations for policy makers. Future research studies are encouraged to adopt the accessible journey chain when investigating barriers to riding public transport.

Children’s life satisfaction and travel satisfaction: Evidence from Canada, Japan, and Sweden

Travel satisfaction has been linked to life satisfaction for adults, but no evidence exists currently for children’s travel. Children’s travel differs from adult’s in numerous ways including limitations related to independent travel and available transport options. Children’s travel is often more local and their desire to explore and learn about their environment may be higher than for adults. The importance of social interaction during travel or at locations may also be a greater consideration for children. Further, many of their destinations are pre-determined such as going to school (not all adults work, but nearly all children of school age attend school). This paper analyzes the relationship between travel satisfaction and life satisfaction for children aged 9–12 in Canada, Japan, and Sweden (n = 425) using partial least squares structural equation modeling. In line with previous findings among adults, the analyses show a significant path from travel satisfaction to life satisfaction among children, suggesting a moderate relationship. Unexpectedly, negative relationships for increased frequency of nearly all mode uses (walking, bus, and car) on travel satisfaction (directly) and life satisfaction (indirectly) were found, which may suggest that children do not enjoy frequent travel. These results suggest a relationship that is likely important, but not necessarily in the ways anticipated.

Developing Tactile Maps for Students with Visual Impairments: A Case Study for Customizing Accommodations

Introduction The authors of this study evaluated the necessary features of tactile maps to provide independent, efficient, and safe travel across a university campus; and a process for developing tactile maps based on user needs and preferences. Methods Participants who have low vision provided input, through interviews and field tests, regarding which features were critical for a tactile map. The four-phase development and research design process included: phase 1, semi-structured interviews about campus navigation; phase 2, creating draft maps using two different tactile media—microcapsule or braille embossed lines; phase 3, field-testing maps through site visits with participants; and phase 4, finalizing the map. Four undergraduate students with low vision participated in phases 1 and 3 to assess their experiences in navigating a campus; and the collected data were used in phases 2 and 4 to create, revise, and finalize the content, layout, and medium of the map. Results Three of the participants preferred microcapsule lines to braille embossed fines, while one participant stated the usefulness of both media. The four-phase process allowed customization of local maps for individual users. Discussion Map features that contribute to readability and efficacy of use include the medium; the layout; the combination of orientation maps, which provide an “overview” of a large area; and mobility maps, which contain more detail and are designed to help the traveler in unfamiliar areas (James, 1982). Implications for practitioners Colleges and universities should gather data and create tactile campus maps for students with low vision or blindness following the four-phase process used during this study. Although the data show that the map's medium is a matter of personal preference, several features are essential to creating a map with maximum readability.

The Threat of Terrorism and Tourist Choice Behavior

The threat of terrorism is increasingly relevant to tourism on a global scale, and no destination can claim exemption. Tourism managers need to be aware of the impact that past, current, and future terrorism events have on tourist behavior. The aim of this research is to further our understanding as to how terrorism advisory information impacts tourists’ preferences for, and trade-offs between, specific aspects of their travel. The research uses a discrete choice experiment (DCE) embedded within a classic between-subjects experimental design. US-based respondents (n = 424) completed the experiment. A random parameter logit (RPL) model is calculated to understand how tourists’ preference structures change as the threat of terrorism intensifies taking into account travel knowledge, sensation seeking, and demographic factors. Results suggest that tourist’s travel choices in relation to accommodation, independent versus group travel, cancellation policy, and price vary significantly as the threat of terrorism increases.

Segmentation by Experiential Familiarity and Travel Mode of the Chinese Outbound Market to Spain

ABSTRACTChinese travel markets are maturing with new travel trends arising as tourists become more experienced. This paper analyzes the possibilities of segmenting Chinese tourists’ motivations and satisfaction in Western destinations by experiential familiarity and travel mode, namely Free Independent Travel and Group-tour Travel. Based on these variables, this study builds on a survey questionnaire of Mainland Chinese travelers to Spain. A quantitative analysis of motivations and satisfaction is performed. Comparison of means, one-way MANOVA and Principal Component Analysis are the main analytical techniques used to understand the a priori selected segments of tourists. The main results show significant differences among consumers: independent travelers are less satisfied with the Chinese language services, whereas group-tour travelers are, overall, less satisfied with the trip and the destination. The results also show that repeat visitors are motivated by different aspects of the destination, such as Spanish natural resources and beaches, which are less important for first-time visitors. Among the studied segments of consumers, the differences in motivation, satisfaction and sociodemographic profiles are discussed along with the practical implications of the research.

Tactile maps – Finnish O&M instructors’ experiences on usability and accessibility

For a person with a visual impairment, the quality of life means independence and equality with the sighted people. For this, independent travel and navigation is essential. Orientation within different types of environments is a challenge and tactile maps are key elements for this. It can also be used for learning about new routes independently. A tactile map is an image of spatial information and figure that uses raised lines and surfaces when introducing a certain area in 3D form. For a public tactile map to be useful, it has to contain consistent information for the user.
 In this study we present results from a survey for the orientation and mobility (O&M) instructors of Finland about usability and ideas for improvement concerning public tactile maps. We sent the survey questionnaire for 30 O&M instructors by electronic mail and there was also a possibility to answer by paper. Altogether we received 24 answers. The main finding was that most of the O&M instructors did not use public tactile maps during the sessions.

The letters of William von Humboldt to a lady friend: The first detailed description of Parkinson's disease by a patient

Wilhelm (William) von Humboldt (1767–1835) was a major European figure of the Napoleonic era. The son of a Prussian aristocrat and his wife of French Huguenot descent, the elder brother of the explorer and natural scientist Alexander von Humboldt, and friend of Goethe and Schiller, Humboldt enjoyed a long period of independent study and travel before entering civil service at the age of 32. As a diplomat, he was appointed Ambassador to the Vatican, Vienna and London, and represented Prussia at the Congress of Vienna in 1814. As Undersecretary of State for Education, he inspired the Berlin University that now bears his name. In 1819, his liberal ideas ultimately resulted in conflict with Chancellor Hardenberg. He resigned from office at the age of 52 to retire to his manor in Tegel, and pursue his pioneering scholarly work in linguistics and philology. Humboldt's publications extend to 17 volumes and include writings on politics, education, philosophy, linguistics and literature, as well as diaries, poems and correspondence. However, he gained fame among the general public (and especially feminine readers) through the letters he wrote, mostly after 1822, to his lady friend Charlotte Diede (1769–1846), with whom he had had a brief platonic love affair in his youth and whom he supported financially for 20 years. In these letters (first published in censored form in 1847 and re-edited in their complete form in 1909 by Albert Leitzmann), Humboldt minutely described the progressive appearance and worsening of symptoms of his illness, now known as Parkinson's disease, including alterations in his handwriting, clumsiness in writing and performing fine movements, weakness, tremulousness, slowness, “inner vibrations of the nerves” distorting the continuity of movement, and curbed posture and gait. He also noted that the symptoms worsened when he was irritated or in a hurry. Cognition and mood were apparently unaffected. Humboldt's self-reports are generally in agreement with the observations of James Parkinson, which were unknown in Germany at the time, and complete them with fine descriptions of micrographia, dysdiadochokinesia, hypokinesia and rigidity. While at the beginning of his illness he attributed his symptoms to premature aging following the death of his wife Caroline von Dacheroden (in 1829), he subsequently came to consider a possible affection of the spinal cord.

Itinerary planning with time budget for risk-averse travelers

Itinerary planning problem (IPP) in public transport networks has witnessed to be a fundamental and important problem in public transport operations management. Although empirical studies show that time budgets are usually prescribed by travelers, the time budget is rarely considered in literature related to IPP under stochastic travel times. In this paper, we study the IPP with time budget (IPPB) in public transport networks with stochastic travel times, which consists of planning an itinerary from an origin to a destination that helps risk-averse travelers mitigate uncertainty and effectively meet their time budgets. A mathematical model (MRHA-IPPB) is developed for the IPPB, in which we use the utility theory to characterize travelers’ risk-averse behaviors. Since minimizing the lateness probability or the expected lateness duration is intractable, we propose a new decision criterion, maximizing risk-hedging ability (short for MRHA hereafter) while guaranteeing that the corresponding certainty equivalent of itinerary travel time would not exceed the time budget. The model MRHA-IPPB is shown theoretically and numerically to consider both the lateness probability and the lateness duration. We show NP-completeness of the IPPB with fully correlated arc travel times and study two tractable scenarios, i.e., the IPPB with independent arc travel times and that with partially correlated arc travel times. We decompose an IPPB as a two-stage problem and efficiently solve it through a binary search scheme with a label-setting algorithm embedded. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the MRHA-IPPB model through an illustrative example and show that the MRHA-based decomposition approach requires only less than one second per query over a real-world public transport network.

Chinese behind the wheel: Factors affecting their satisfaction with international self- drive holidays

Abstract This study seeks to assess the factors influencing the satisfaction of Chinese tourists when they undertake self-drive international vacations. There are few existing studies about this independent travel market. Semi-structured interviews were undertaken to gather initial views about the attributes contributing to self-drive satisfaction. A questionnaire-based survey was then employed in Shanghai. Multiple linear regression analysis was used to test the factors which significantly affected tourists’ satisfaction. Analysis of the data reflected some of the findings from limited previous studies of other international groups: the scenery, road facilities, and available activities all have a significant positive impact on satisfaction. However, for the Chinese drive tourists, the responses of the local community to their trip, as well as key environmental issues, notably air quality, are distinctively important concerns. Implications are identified for international destination management organizations which are interested in promoting to and developing this self-drive Chinese market.