Pergamon PII: S0261-5177(98)00037-5 Tou;qsm Management, Vol. 19, No. 4. pp. 313-320, 1998 ~;~ 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved Printed in Great Britain 0261-5177/98 $19.00+0.00 Multi-faceted tourist travel decisions: a constraint-based conceptual framework to describe tourists' sequential choices of travel components Benedict G C Dellaert Center for Economic Research and Economics Institute Tilburg (EIT), Tilburg University, PO Box 90153, 5000 LE Tilburg, The Netherlands Dick F Ettema Hague Consulting, The Hague, The Netherlands Christer Lindh Transport and Traffic Phmning Group, Royal Institute of Technolo~; Stockholm, Sweden This paper introduces a first step towards analyzing tourist travel choice in situations where tourists may: (i) temporally separate their choice of different components of the travel package, e.g. tourists may choose travel destination before accommodation, and (ii) face a structure of constraints that limits their choice options, e.g. tourists may be restricted by school holidays when choosing the period in which to travel. Theoretical insights with regard to tourist travel, destination and activity choices are reviewed as a basis for the proposed conceptual framework. An exploratory empirical study of the proposed framework is given and implications are discussed. © 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved Introduction Imagine the following scenario: It is February 1998 and the Jones family are considering their holiday plans for the year. They roughly know where they want to go--a mountain area where they've been several times before--and in which period they would like to travel. After a few weeks of contemplation and some further orientation they decide on a 3-week camping trip in the middle of August. One of the children will not come along because she prefers to go somewhere else with some friends. The family decides to book one of five campgrounds in the region, depending on availability, and will decide on the route to take later. Many decisions tourists make are not single independent choices of separatc elements (such as destination, accommodation or travel companions), but rather, arc complex multi-faceted decisions in which the choices for different elements are inter- related and evolve in a decision process ovcr time. Although travelers may also book prc-packaged travel tours, many of the decisions that travelers face arc not between fully packaged alternatives, and the above anecdote illustrates how a travel decision process for a holiday might take place if it involved multiple components. The anecdote illustrates that different facets of a trip arc decided upon (such as destination, accommodation, travel timing) and in some tcmporal sequence (for example, trip type was selected beforc specific desti- nation). It also illustrates that decision-makers may face some constraints that may rcstrict their options (such as working hours and accommodation availability). Assumc that tourists' travel choices can be regarded as the outcome of a sequential scheduling process in which a number of decisions arc sched- uled over a longer period (e.g. varying from a few days to several months) and that these decisions 313