An Exploratory Study on the Use of Information Sources by Consumers to Select Australian Regional Travel Agencies

Abstract

This research investigates the information sources consumers used to select regional travel agencies to make their travel arrangements. The research design involves two stages, in-depth interviews with 13 participants and a mail-out survey of 400. The in-depth interviews highlighted the need to remove three particular information sources (travel guidebooks, travel or automotive clubs and local tourist offices) for inclusion in the mail-out survey and replaced with two other information sources (television lifestyle programs and travel consultants) worthy of investigation. The mail-out survey revealed that personal experience was the most important information source used in the selection of a regional travel agency whilst yellow pages were identified as the least influential. The findings highlighted the relative importance of the 11 information sources investigated and also suggested that informal sources were more important than formal sources when consumers search for information sources to assist them with their selection of the travel agencies to patronize.