Vacation Planning Research Articles

The Best Experiences Cannot be Planned: The Effect of Maximizing Vacation Planning on Consumer Satisfaction and Well-Being

Maximizing theory differentiates between individuals who accept minimally sufficient purchase options and those who strive to maximize their value for money. Maximizers are less satisfied with their decisions and suffer diminished subjective well-being. We analyzed 376 questionnaires and conducted 12 interviews of working Germans to extend maximizing theory to vacations, which are more complex, experiential, and hedonic than products studied in previous research on maximizing. Path analysis of questionnaire data showed significant, negative indirect effects of maximizing on subjective well-being through aspects of the vacation decision process and subsequent vacation satisfaction. Deductive thematic analysis of interviews showed that maximizers’ time-consuming searching through alternatives created doubt and stringent expectations, thus explaining how maximizing degrades vacation satisfaction and subjective well-being. Thus, we suggest that individuals be conscious of the personal resources and expectations that they invest in vacation decisions. Furthermore, the tourism industry should emphasize inspiration and customization instead of variety.

Digitalizing Tourism and Interactive Navigation: A Case Study of Pakistan

The emergence of technology-driven tourism is transforming Pakistan's economic landscape, prompting a detailed examination to improve tourist experiences and streamline tour planning. This study introduces a customized application framework and User Interface (UI) design to assist tourists in effortlessly locating accommodations, dining options, attractions, and leisure spots while exploring Pakistan's diverse demographic appeal. Through a structured questionnaire merging Information Technology (IT) and Pakistan's tourism industry, primary data is meticulously analyzed, revealing the pivotal role of digitization and innovation in enhancing ongoing tourism events. Descriptive and correlational analyses highlight the widespread preference among tourists for using mobile applications and social media platforms for vacation planning, with a notable 62.4% of male respondents among 398 participants. Using insights utilizing from the survey, interactive maps provide comprehensive information on tourist locales, historical contexts, imagery, and transit routes, thereby enriching navigation experiences. This research's significance lies in its potential to revolutionize Pakistan's tourism sector through digitization and interactive navigation, enabling the country to leverage its rich cultural heritage and diverse attractions to attract a broader range of visitors. Through the development of user-friendly applications and initiatives, Pakistan can enhance its economic outlook and promote sustainable tourism practices, ensuring long-term viability and inclusivity within the industry.

Tourist involvement in vacation planning and booking: impact on word of mouth and loyalty

Purpose This paper aims to explore how different levels of involvement in the prevacation phase affect vacationers’ subsequent satisfaction, word of mouth (WOM) recommendations and loyal behavior with regard to the planning/booking process. Design/methodology/approach Data from a field study (N = 5,158) in a travel planning context are used to investigate the differences in WOM recommendations and loyalty between self-packagers (higher involvement) and package buyers (lower involvement). Findings Tourists who are less involved in the prevacation phase are more likely to recommend the planning/booking process, while more involved tourists are more likely to repeat the same planning/booking process than package buyers. Practical implications The findings have implications for tourist agencies, tour operators, tourism suppliers and tourism marketers in terms of customer retention and WOM communication. These findings also have theoretical implications for the WOM and loyalty literature. Originality/value This paper reveals how involvement in travel planning may affect satisfaction, WOM recommendation and loyalty behavior. These relationships have not been investigated before.

Sports-related leisure behavior in Alpine regions during the COVID-19 pandemic-A cross-sectional study in Austria, Germany and Italy.

As a planetary health challenge, COVID-19 forced governments around the world to take action to prevent the most severe consequences resulting from the spread of the virus. These measures ranged from stay-at-home orders to limitations on indoor and outdoor activities, travel restrictions and the cancelation of sports events, all of which affected people's leisure activities and daily lives. Therefore, the aim of this study is to examine changes in sports-related leisure behavior in terms of attending major sports events, following major sports events via media, travel intentions and the use of new sports offerings. Furthermore, we aimed to identify variables associated with changed sports-related leisure behavior during the pandemic. A cross-sectional online survey (n = 1,809) was conducted from December 2020 to January 2021 in the Alpine regions of Austria, Germany and Italy. Sports-related leisure behavior was investigated for changes during the pandemic compared to the time before the coronavirus outbreak and for differences between the three countries. Results showed that the self-reported importance of attending major sports events decreased significantly in the Alpine regions of all three countries during COVID-19. Prevailing restrictions affected vacation planning for over 80% of participants. A majority of approximately three quarters of respondents stated they had spent their holidays at home during the travel restrictions. Sports facilities and opportunities played an important role in the choice of vacation destination for more than half of participants. A binary logistic regression showed significant correlations between vacation planning during COVID-19 and the variables gender, income, quality of life and mental health. 31.9% of all respondents tried new sports offerings during extended restrictions, with a large proportion (72.4%) using apps, online tools or courses. Furthermore, approximately 30% of respondents increased their e-sports consumption. The results showed that sports-related leisure behavior in Alpine regions changed in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the future, policymakers as well as sports and leisure providers should react to these behavioral changes and adapt their portfolio and services to meet consumers92 demands.

Ravnoteža između života i posla - istorijat i implikacije za hotelsku industriju

Work-life balance has become a popular area of research in the past twenty years. Before the 1970s, work and family were studied as mutually exclusive domains. The term "work-life balance" was introduced in the late 1970s to describe the balancing act of employed women who were mothers, juggling child care and work responsibilities. During the 1990s, the recognition of work-life balance's significance emerged as a vital issue for all employees, regardless of gender, parental, or marital status. The concept of work-life balance has evolved from role conflict between family and work, managing multiple roles to work and life enrichment and integration. Currently, the goal of work-life balance research is to determine whether the expectations of employees regarding work and multiple life roles are compatible or not. The significance of work-life balance research extends to individual, organizational, institutional, and national levels of outcomes. It is particularly relevant in the hospitality sector due to the unique nature of the work involved (intense work activities, long working hours, challenges in human resource management, organization of work, vacation planning, a significant representation of women employees, and health issues among hospitality workers). Therefore, it is considered a crucial issue in the hotel industry.

Impact of the pandemic on lifestyle components of resource-rich citizens

The article describes impact of the pandemic spread, the regime of self-isolation and social distancing on certain lifestyle components of resource-rich Russians living in big cities. The presented results are based on a series of specially held in-depth interviews. The lifestyle was considered in terms of such components as: communication practices, consumer practices, leisure and recreation, vacation. In addition, general assessments of the period since the beginning of the pandemic spread were identified in terms of changes in attitudes towards health, plans for the future, and the government's influence on preventing development of crisis processes. The conducted interviews allow us to draw preliminary conclusions that the introduced regime of self-isolation and social distancing had a rather serious impact on such components of lifestyle as the forms of communication practices in everyday life; leisure and recreation; vacation planning; health-preserving behavior. The numerous problems that the respondents faced as the result of the introduction of anti-epidemiological measures, inevitably caused the growth of negative moods, the intensification of existential fears because of the uncertainty of the situation development in the future. At the same time, the crisis contributed to emergence of new opportunities associated with active development of information technologies, which are among the most important factors in the transformation of the old way of life. If respondents, who are employees at some companies, are more likely to take wait-and-see attitude to the pandemic-related changes, but those respondents, who are entrepreneurs or self-employed, have shown a more active reaction to the changes by improving their business models and diversification of their activities.

The Vacation Planning Problem: A multi-level clustering-based metaheuristic approach

We study the Vacation Planning Problem (VPP), an extension of the Tourist Trip Design Problem which is suitable for modelling scenarios wherein a tourist wishes to explore a large geographical area (e.g. an administrative region), rather than a single urban destination. Further to deriving personalized daily tourist routes i.e., ordered visits to points of interest (POIs) that maximize tourist satisfaction (profit), VPP also recommends intermediate destinations along the trip (most typically, towns to stay overnight) and accommodation areas, as well as optimal distribution of trip days among the different destinations. Herein, we formally define the VPP and present an innovative multi-level clustering scheme to group POIs together and an efficient dynamic programming approach for solving the problem. The proposed method yields higher-profit results compared to an existing approach, as it adopts a sophisticated approach in rendering the geography of the region to be visited by the tourist.

Systematic investigation of keywords selection and processing strategy on search engine forecasting: a case of tourist volume in Beijing

The timeliness, precision, and low cost of search data have great potential for projecting tourist volume. Obtaining valuable information for decision-making, particularly for predicting, is hampered by the vast amount of search data. A systematic investigation of keyword selection and processing has been conducted. Using Beijing tourist volume as an example, 11 different feature extraction algorithms were selected and combined with long short-term memory (LSTM), random forest (RF) and fuzzy time series (FTS) for forecasting tourist volume. A total of 1612 keywords were retrieved from Baidu Index demand mapping using the direct word extraction method, range word extraction method and empirical selection method. The remaining 813 keywords were subjected to feature extraction. Based on the forecasting results of medium and short-term (1-day, 7-days and 10-days), the forecasting results of Kernel principal component analysis (KPCA) and locally linear embedding (LLE) are relatively stable when the dimensionality is reduced to 5 dimensions. The forecasting results of t-stochastic neighbor embedding (t-SNE), isometric mapping (IsoMap) and locally linear embedding (LLE), locality preserving projections (LPP), independent component correlation (ICA) are relatively stable when the dimensionality is reduced to 10 dimensions. Accurately forecasting many factors (transportation, attraction, food, lodging, travel, tips, tickets, and weather) provides a solid foundation for tourism demand optimization and scientific management and a resource for tourists' holistic vacation planning.

Travel Decisions

Travel aggregator websites empower vacation planners to efficiently match their travel-specific needs with tourism suppliers. Prominent in communication studies, limited aggregator website research has been conducted in examining vacation planners’ usage behavior with travel aggregators. Particularly relevant during the travel and tourism restrictions midst COVID-19, this study extends the Information Needs Model by recognizing the broadened role travel aggregator websites play in the decision-making process of vacation planning. This research explores how leisure planners utilized travel aggregators when travel restrictions and mandates were employed and then rescinded the following year. Travel aggregation websites’ functionality was analyzed via vacation planners who use these websites. The online survey addressed: website functionality, demographics, perceived needs of leisure travelers, motivation for travel information sharing, and security concerns during COVID-19. Items addressed were personalization, needs, and satisfaction per demographics. This research provides recommendations to help travel aggregation websites, marketers, and tourism organizations adapt travel aggregation websites’ search functionality and customize content post-pandemic to create a more consumer-focused approach.

Critical Analysis of the Possible Determining Factors of COVID-19 Epidemiological Trend in Bangladesh: A Review

Since its first report on March 08, 2020, COVID-19 positive cases and number of deaths have increased which reached the peak in late June and started to decline slowly in late August in Bangladesh. COVID-19 transmission and disease progression depends on multifaceted determinants e.g. virus genetics, host immunity, social distancing, co-morbidity, socio-demographic and environmental parameters. Therefore observed epidemiological trend may not follow predicted models and thus warrant detail investigation of the contributing factors. In this perspective, in the light of literature we hypothesize that preventive intervention strategies, socioeconomic limitations, climatic and meteorological indexes, acquired immunity of Bangladeshi population, demographic characteristics, health indicators and food habits contributed toward the observed COVID-19 trend. The key limiting factor was number of diagnostic tests in getting real epidemic scenario. Strong immunity of young people compared to the elderly and low prevalence of non-communicable diseases might have kept most of them asymptomatic, less severe with silent recovery. Climatic parameters, less population density in rural areas and certain food habits perhaps helped to restrict and combat the infection up to a level. Genetic polymorphism can also be driving factor in disease progression. Despite several helpful determinants in Bangladesh, person to person contact is still the leading risk factor for COVID-19 transmission. Infection may increase rapidly if safe distance and preventive measures are not strictly followed especially in the coming winter. Expansion of test capacity, intelligent work and vacation planning and public awareness should continue to reduce the infection rate and disease catastrophe. Bangladesh Journal of Infectious Diseases June 2021;8(1): 36-41

Development of a system for recording working hours, planning vacations and time off

The article presents the results of the development of a system of working time accounting, vacation planning and time off in the company «Digital Mind Development» LLC. The task of simplifying the process of planning vacations and time off is solved by systematizing this process. Such a system will allow you to store all data about vacations and days off of employees in one place, as well as structure this data.

Trends in tourism development in the world and EU countries

The paper is devoted to the analysis of world trends in tourism development in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Climate change, declining drinking water levels, and high concentrations of greenhouse gases are forcing people and businesses to think about using new methods to reduce their impact on the environment. The circular economy must become a lifeline and change the behavior of the world's population. The COVID-19 pandemic has almost completely stopped all life on earth. At one point, air traffic stopped, sea and river cruises, entire cities and countries were closed for quarantine. The pandemic made all residents think and rethink everyday life, attitude to travel and nature. Tourism even now remains one of the sectors most affected by the coronavirus pandemic, and the outlook remains rather uncertain. Life will not be the same as it used to be. The pandemic has significantly affected every sector of the tourism industry: airlines, transport, cruise lines, hotels, restaurants, attractions (such as national parks, protected areas and cultural heritage sites), travel agencies, tour operators. Small and medium-sized enterprises, which make up a large informal tourism sector, make up about 80 per cent of the tourism sector, and many of them may not survive the crisis without significant support. In the future, not only the format of travel will change, but also our attitude to them: vacation planning will have to be approached more consciously and take into account many factors. Tourism was one of the first sectors to be deeply impacted by the pandemic, as measures introduced to contain the virus led to a near-complete cessation of tourism activities around the world. The sector also risks being among one of the last to recover, with the ongoing travel restrictions and the global recession. This has consequences beyond the tourism economy, with the many other sectors that support, and are supported by, tourism also significantly impacted. Therefore, the paper considers the trends of tourism development in the world, as well as the application of the principles of the circular economy in this area. various macro-environmental factors force the tourism industry and tourists to change their preferences and tastes. Global and European trends include safety and hygiene when traveling, the growth of contactless payments, the spread of local tourism, healthy and organic food, the use of virtual reality, robots, chatbots and process automation. In addition, ecological, rural and transformational tourism is gaining popularity among tourist destinations.

GoTrip: An Automatic Ontological Travel Itinerary Planner Using SPARQL Inferencing

The paper proposes Semantic web-based travel agent which will provide best tour plan for a user, based on his current requirements and past profile. The proposed travel agent will perform all the tasks of a planned trip including availability and booking of trains, flights, hotels and a complete travel schedule depending on the destination, number of people travelling, number of days of travel, user spending capacity, his interest etc. In case, user is not ready for a destination, it will also guide him for the possible destinations which will match the weather and his rest of the current requirements. The complete Travel Ontology is developed in OWL using Protege 5.2 version and the validity of the above functionalities is checked by executing SPARQL queries against the semantic annotated data and Rule ML. The paper not only automates the process of vacation planning for the user but also consider his personal requirements while showing him the results.

THE IMPORTANCE OF WEB SITE IN THE PREFERENCE OF TOURIST PRODUCTS

Tourism is also one of the important sectors where information and communication technologies are used extensively. Recent studies show that the internet has become one of the most important sources of travel information acquisition and travel decision making. The revolutionary development of information technology has dramatically changed the daily lives of society and people, including the search for information and vacation planning by tourists. Nowadays web sites have become an environment where businesses not only keep their products and services but also draw more customers by attracting more customers. It has become an environment where an important stakeholder in the tourism sector constitutes an important part of the tourism industry. site use is of great importance. Through its web sites, potential customers accommodation businesses that can meet their queries and requests and that fulfill their direct booking requests in the most appropriate, fastest and safest manner will increase the chances of competition in the market.

The world on your desktop [Virtual Reality - travel

Where are you going on holiday this summer? The answer is - probably nowhere! With the arrival of Covid-19, our vacation planning has been put on hold. So to replace our annual fortnight of rest and relaxation, tour companies and tourist boards have been rushing to create virtual breaks. At the heart of enabling these experiences are technologies that allow us to escape from the confinement of lockdown to another part of the world. Some of this technology is tried, tested and relatively cheap. But the ways in which we travel virtually are expanding and improving rapidly.

Information Technologies: Leading Innovative Factor for the Development of Independent Tourism

<p>Independent travel has blossomed and become an important movement in modern tourism. However, past research has never explored the use and impact information and communication technologies have on independent tourists.</p><p>The purpose of the research is to analyze the results of two surveys held in the Russian Federation that show the way different travel search engines, booking systems change the concept of modern tourism. This study illustrates that independent vacation planning is booming today’s travel market, which is becoming more personalized, digitalized and independent from giant tour operators. The article discusses how internet users’ requests in the search engines have changed within only one year and how these changes influenced people choice of accommodation and destination.</p>

Implications of Enuresis in Children and Their Families

Nocturnal enuresis (bedwetting during the night at sleep) is one of the most disturbing and frustrating childhood problems for both parents as well as children (Bulut, 2019). As many as 5 million American children and families are suffering from it (Warzak, 1993). Nocturnal enuresis is one of the most common disorders of childhood (Schulpen, 1997). If it is not treated, it has a significant effect on children’s social and emotional health. Even when they reach adulthood, enuresis can still have a serious effect on their careers, social life and personal relationships (Graff, 1992). Furthermore, enuresis causes a financial drain in both the families and the society as a whole. Continuously having to wash, dry, and buy washing soaps and diapers can cause a significant financial burden on families. Additionally, enuresis can limit the family’s mobility and vacation planning. Therefore, it seems that it has multiple consequences to be considered.

Investment Insight: Demographics and Investment Preference among Retail Investors.

This research studies about the investor’s preference with special reference to Neyveli Township. This study has considered 200 respondents. The main objective of the study is to determine the factors that influence the investors while making investments. This research has used self-construction questionnaire. Frequency analysis, mean and standard deviation, and ANOVA has been computed. It is found that the regular income, security for income, safety, children education, risk protection, purchasing of new asset, debt free life, children marriage, luxury lifestyle, parental care, home loan, tax benefits, vacation planning, retirement plan, future return and charity have an influence on the investors. The result shows that age and gender has no influence in the investment.

Maternal major depression and synchrony of facial affect during mother-child interactions.

Maternal history of Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) dramatically increases children's risk for developing depression, highlighting the critical need for further research on the specific processes involved in the intergenerational transmission of depression. Although previous research suggests that maternal depression may adversely affect the quality of mother-child interactions, less is known about the role of maternal MDD in the moment-to-moment changes in affect that occur during these interactions. The goal of this project, therefore, was to examine synchrony of facial displays of affect during a positive (Vacation Planning) and a negative (Issues Discussion) mother-child interaction, and how this synchrony may be impacted by maternal history of MDD. In doing so, we examined both concurrent and lagged synchrony of facial affect. We recruited 341 mother-child dyads (child average age = 9.30 years; 50.1% girls; 71.6% Caucasian) with and without a maternal history of MDD. Facial electromyography (EMG), continuously recorded during those tasks, was used to index mother and child facial affect. We found that a maternal history of MDD was associated with reduced concurrent synchrony and lagged synchrony (mother facial affect predicting changes in child facial affect) of positive affect during Vacation Planning. Reduced concurrent mother-child synchrony of positive affect during the discussion was also associated with an increase in child self-reported sad affect from before to after the discussion. These findings provide promising initial evidence for how the dynamic exchange of positive affect during mother-child interactions may be disrupted in families with maternal MDD history. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Розробка програмного модуля веб-додатка для розподілення робочих процесів «Менеджер завдань»

In today's world, the issue of speeding up the work process is widespread in order to increase the efficiency of using working time. "Task Manager" is a project management tool that greatly simplifies the workflow. The main task of such a system is to facilitate the distribution of tasks between employees and control over their implementation. Through the use of such programs, the user can save time in meetings and offline discussions. In addition, such platforms allow you to find out how efficient and consistent the team works. All you need is to open the service and see what's happening right now in the project. The "Task manager" can be used both at enterprises to improve the organization of the work process, as well as ordinary users, such as vacation planning, weekend, and so on. A number of modern solutions for the development of such analytical information systems have been analyzed, which allowed to identify the main weaknesses and limitations that need to be addressed. A number of approaches are proposed for their elimination. The complex of models of such systems in UML-notation is developed. Software implementation of module for JavaScript is carried out. JavaScript has good performance, a large number of libraries, and a large developer community. The client part is written on Angular, the server part is NodeJs and Express. MySQL is used to store data, which, in turn, works with the server using ORM Sequelize. Sequelize allows you to change the database in the future without rewriting the code; you only need to change the configuration of the application. This set of technologies provides the application with good performance and easy support. After analyzing similar solutions, let's mention a number of developmental benefits: a clear interface, high performance, cross-platform, open source product, which is important if users need some specific features, then they can independently add them to the project without the intervention of the module developers. Also, this software module can be used on any device with a screen for displaying and connecting to the Internet to download information.