The overall purpose of this study was to better understand why youth travellers are visiting Manitoba. A web-survey was administered to visitors of the Hostelling International - Canada, Manitoba Region website. Youth leisure travellers planning to visit Manitoba were found to be between 24 and 28 years of age, mostly from Canada and Australia, not students, but educated and employed, with between $501 and $3,500 available for travel purposes. Respondents’ travel plans were found to include; travel alone or with one other person, an average stay of 5 days planned for Manitoba, travel by rented vehicle or by bus, and the use of the internet, guidebooks and family and friends as information sources prior to travel. Dominant motives for travel to Manitoba were uncovered, and relationships of Manitoba specific travel motives were found with several demographic and travel characteristics. The results of this study can be used by the Manitoba tourism sector to market Manitoba travel experiences and to emphasize how they cater to one or more dominant travel motives. This will enable them to better attract and satisfy their customers. / October 2007

The overall purpose of this study was to better understand why youth travellers are visiting Manitoba. A web-survey was administered to visitors of the Hostelling International - Canada, Manitoba Region website. Youth leisure travellers planning to visit Manitoba were found to be between 24 and 28 years of age, mostly from Canada and Australia, not students, but educated and employed, with between $501 and $3,500 available for travel purposes. Respondents’ travel plans were found to include; travel alone or with one other person, an average stay of 5 days planned for Manitoba, travel by rented vehicle or by bus, and the use of the internet, guidebooks and family and friends as information sources prior to travel. Dominant motives for travel to Manitoba were uncovered, and relationships of Manitoba specific travel motives were found with several demographic and travel characteristics. The results of this study can be used by the Manitoba tourism sector to market Manitoba travel experiences and to emphasize how they cater to one or more dominant travel motives. This will enable them to better attract and satisfy their customers.

The overall purpose of this study was to better understand why youth travellers are visiting Manitoba. A web-survey was administered to visitors of the Hostelling International - Canada, Manitoba Region website. Youth leisure travellers planning to visit Manitoba were found to be between 24 and 28 years of age, mostly from Canada and Australia, not students, but educated and employed, with between $501 and $3,500 available for travel purposes. Respondents’ travel plans were found to include; travel alone or with one other person, an average stay of 5 days planned for Manitoba, travel by rented vehicle or by bus, and the use of the internet, guidebooks and family and friends as information sources prior to travel. Dominant motives for travel to Manitoba were uncovered, and relationships of Manitoba specific travel motives were found with several demographic and travel characteristics. The results of this study can be used by the Manitoba tourism sector to market Manitoba travel experiences and to emphasize how they cater to one or more dominant travel motives. This will enable them to better attract and satisfy their customers.

A feminist point of view is used in this study of gay men living in a small, collegiate community who use leisure travel as a negotiation strategy to achieve freedom of expression. Feminism is concerned with equality, empowerment, social change, the elimination of invisibility and the distortion of situated experiences. Feminist research is no more defined by the sex of the researcher than by the sex of the researched. Several in-depth interviews were conducted with key informants who revealed the complex nature of how many gay men pursue leisure experiences that are affirming to their gay self-identities in "Soledad." While gay meeting places and people exist in this small community, they remain mostly covert and invisible. Leisure travel to larger cities was a major negotiation strategy used to escape the stifling, hetero-normative community in which they lived. Escaping perceived hostilities was essential for gay men to feel comfortable exploring their homosexuality in a positive, affirming manner. Furthermore, the benefits of leisure travel bled into the daily lives of gay men after leisure travel was performed. For instance, leisure travel helped gay men make other gay friends who helped them cope with their homosexuality, and, in the process, they helped them "learn" how to be gay. The skills and experiences these gay men acquired while pursuing leisure in other places helped them transform their daily lives and home community into a more bearable place to live, thereby making home an easier place to negotiate. Gay men were able to discover a whole new set of possibilities of how to express themselves and discovered a new "gaze" by which to view the world. This research adds to the literature on travel and tourism, while expanding the information we have concerning the gay subculture that is becoming more socially and politically efficacious and economically powerful. Likewise, some of the gaps in the literature concerning leisure constraints and negotiation are also filled by this research.

American households spend over $30 billion on tourism and take over 177 million long-distance leisure trips each year. These trips, and the subsequent vehicle miles traveled, have a significant impact on the transportation systems at major destinations across the country, especially those destinations that are still improving their transportation systems. Surprisingly, not much is known related to this type of travel. This dissertation expands the current knowledge of tourism travel behavior, in terms of how people make decisions regarding long-distance leisure activities and time use. Specifically, this dissertation develops and comprehensively examines a behavioral framework for household tourism time use and activity patterns. This framework combines (and builds upon) theory and methods from both transportation and tourism research fields such that it can be used to improve tourism demand modeling. This framework takes an interdisciplinary approach to describe how long distance leisure travelers allocate and maximize their time use across various types of activities. It also considers the many levels of tourism time use and activity patterns, including the structuring the broad annual leisure activity and time budget, forming individual tourism trips within the defined budget, and selecting specific activities and timing during each distinct tourism trip. Subsequently, this dissertation will additionally apply the time use and activity participation behavioral framework to four critical tourism research topics to demonstrate how the tourism behavioral framework can effectively be used to provide behavioral insights into some of the most commonly studied critical tourism issues. These application topics include household participation in broad tourism travel activities, travel parties’ tourism destination and travel mode selection, individuals’ loyalty towards daily and tourism activities, and travel parties’ participation in combinations of specific tourism trip activities. These application studies incorporate a variety of data sources, decision makers, study scales, situation-appropriate modeling techniques, and economic/individual/environmental factors to capture all aspects of the decision and travel activity-making process. / text

The airline product is a standardized product and positioning in today’s highly competitive and constantly changing environment is one of the most important elements in an airline’s marketing strategy. Airlines are constantly trying to apply and implement various marketing positioning strategies in order to achieve success and growth. The overall purpose of this study was to examine the positioning strategies of the four selected Middle Eastern airlines in the South African business and leisure travel environment, based on airline performance in terms of service quality attributes that are perceived as important by passengers. The results of the study will contribute towards the air transport literature by confirming the validity of grouping a large number of service quality attributes and adding value to the role players’ understanding of their particular airlines’ influence and importance of service quality for positioning. The study also addresses the need for reliable information on attributes of service quality that are perceived by South African business and leisure passenger as crucial factors impacting on the selection of their airline. A literature review as well as empirical research was conducted to achieve the purpose of this study: the former provided a demarcation of the broad concepts of service quality and positioning. These concepts were specifically linked to the airline industry, providing a clear indication of the positioning strategies used by the selected airlines as reflected through the media and the airlines’ websites. The literature review also helped to identify the service quality attributes that were important to passengers of different airlines. These attributes were used to determine the positioning of the selected airlines as perceived by their passengers. The positioning of airlines was graphically represented using 3D Centroid plots. The data was analyzed using factor analysis, analysis of variance and multivariate analysis of variance. Factor analysis was used to group identified attributes of service quality important to passengers of selected Middle Eastern airlines. Analysis of variance was used to test the relationships between variables, while multivariate analysis of variance was used to test the effect of variables on each other. Databases were not available for this study: therefore non-probability sampling methods, namely convenience and quota sampling, were used. A limitation of the study within which the data analysis occurred is that the data collected was not normally distributed. The data had to be transformed and then tested for normality. The transformed data was normally distributed . The results of the research suggest that passengers are mostly concerned with the responsiveness of the airline and reliability of service, followed by consistency in the quality of service, and are less concerned about the added efforts of the airline as its main positioning component. The findings suggest the direction to be taken for the purpose of service improvement. Airlines should focus more on security measures and well-trained employees, as this will give passengers more confidence. Being responsive and prompt and willing to help, with a courteous attitude, should be a priority objective for employees as part of the service culture. The findings also suggest that more resources should be invested in customization, such as loyalty and frequent flyer programmes. The recommendations of this study could be used to improve the current process of service delivery. / Dissertation (MCom(Tourism Management))--University of Pretoria, 2008. / Tourism Management / MCom / Unrestricted

In the last five years, the world has experienced unexpected tragic events and natural disasters. However, international tourism is expected to grow continually and tourists are therefore becoming more concerned with safety and security during their international travel. This dissertation investigated individuals' risk perception of vacationing at two scenario international destinations, Australia and Japan. While ten dimensions of perceived risk in international leisure travel were identified in the literature and one additional dimension of "Communication Risk" was proposed for this study, only seven dimensions were found in this study: "Health Risk," "Value Risk," "Psychological Risk," "Social Risk," "Terrorism Risk," "Equipment Risk," and "Communication Risk." The other four dimensions — "Financial Risk," "Time Risk," "Satisfaction Risk," and "Political Instability Risk" — were either merged into other dimensions or did not appear as an independent dimension in this study. The "Communication Risk" which was proposed in this study was found to be a valid dimension of perceived risk in vacationing at international destinations. The relationships of perceived risk to other factors were also examined. Individuals' characteristics of novelty seeking were negatively related to their risk perception, as were individuals' proficiency of the destination's native language. Those who have experience visiting the destination tended to perceive less risk in vacationing at the destination; the more familiarity/expertise with the destination, the less risk was perceived. When an individual perceived a higher level of risk towards a destination, s/he was less likely to vacation at the destination. Individuals were more likely to choose a packaged tour than independent travel when they had a higher level of risk perception towards vacationing at a particular international destination. / Ph. D.

Leisure activities and outdoor recreation are valuable aspects of people's everyday life. With more people living in cities than ever, access to natural areas is becoming a more relevant issue, and many protected nature areas serve both to preserve biodiversity and make nature accessible to a wider public. Living at a distance to nature increases the need for transportation and previous research show that travel connected to leisure activities, and to outdoor activities in particular, is carried out by car to a higher extent than other travel. With increasing climate change, a shift towards more sustainable transportation is needed. While much research and work has been put into shifting everyday travel to public transport, there is a lack of research and a bigger resistance to change when it comes to leisuretravel. This study investigates the possibility of traveling with bus to nature reserves around Umeå, Sweden, by combining public transport data with data on nature reserves. The analyses are carried out in ArcGIS Pro, using Network Analyst models Route and Service area for six different times on a Saturday between 10.00 am and 11.40 am. The results show that, out of 69 nature reserves in a 50 km radius from the city centre, 24 are reachable within 90 minutes and ten of them within 60 minutes. Further, the study discusses the possibility to exercise popular outdoor activities in these nature reserves. The most common activities are walking and hiking and the findings show that six of the ten nature reserves have roads, paths or tracks that make these activities possible.

By the mid-1950s leisure travel became both a new arena in the civil rights movement as well as a tactic in that struggle. Middle class African Americans felt their travel (both domestic and international) constituted both a critique of race relations at home and a realization of their rights as citizens. Alongside this development, I argue, was the proliferation of black travel columns and travel ads that simultaneously upheld the Caribbean as a model of racial progressivism while reinforcing its status as an exotic location dedicated to the pleasure of American tourists. By 1960 this ostensibly apolitical movement became politicized when ex-boxer Joe Louis met resistance from the mainstream press after promoting Fidel Castro's Cuba as a black American playground. In this second section I argue that the scandal surrounding Louis' PR campaign was revelatory of white unease regarding the transnational racial/political connections being forged between a selection of African Americans and Castro, thus constituting the story as yet another episode in the entangled development of the Cold War and the civil rights movement. / History

Trafiksystem utformade till förmån för bilanvändning föranleder stora utmaningar i form av globala klimatförändringar, där omkring en fjärdedel av de globala koldioxidutsläppen kan kopplas till transportsektorn. Traditionella tillvägagångssätt för att sänka utsläppen från personbilar, där fysisk infrastruktur är det främsta verktyget, anses inte tillräckligt för att möta de ambitiösa miljömålen på global och nationell nivå. Därmed måste nya metoder för att sänka utsläppen utredas och ett alternativ är att studera hur förändringar i trafikanters beteende kan resultera i minskad bilanvändning och därmed bidra till mer hållbara trafiksystem. Att skjutsa barn till och från idrottsaktiviteter inkluderas ofta som en av orsakerna till att familjer med barn känner ett behov att ha tillgång till en egen bil i större utsträckning än andra befolkningsgrupper. Det övergripande syftet med detta examensarbete var att, med hjälp av tre idrottsföreningar i olika stora svenska tätorter, analysera hur skjutsningen av barn är organiserad, vilka strukturer som stödjer och vilka som minskar behovet av skjutsning med bil. Syftet var dessutom att skapa kunskap om hur individen formar sitt resebeteende baserat på sin rumsliga och sociala omgivning. Målet var att med vetskapen om detta kunna utforma planeringstrategier för minskad bilanvändning. För att uppnå syftet med studien krävdes det att flera metoder kombinerades. De metoder som användes var en litteraturstudie, en enkätstudie och en intervjustudie. Enkäten skickades till föräldrarna på idrottsföreningarna och utifrån svaren kategoriserades de svarande utifrån deras skjutsningsbeteenden. Därefter intervjuades föräldrar från de olika kategorierna för att kunna tillgå kvalitativa data på ett systematiskt sätt. Resultatet av studien visar att det finns en skjutsningsproblematik som följer av att bil anses vara det mest praktiska färdmedlet för att ta barn till idrottsaktiviteter. Studiens resultat indikerar att skjutsning av barn till idrottsaktiviteter påverkas av ett antal olika faktorer och att dessa skiljer sig åt mellan individer, sociala sammanhang och fysiska kontexter. Det framgår att det från föräldrarnas sida finns potential att samordna skjutsning och på så sätt bidra till omställningen till ett mer hållbart skjutsande. För att föreningar ska kunna understödja denna omställning så presenteras ett antal Mobility Management-åtgärder inspirerade av föräldrarnas förslag och av de teorier som ingår i litteraturstudien. / Traffic systems designed to benefit car use causes major climate change challenges and one fourth of global carbon dioxide emissions can be derived from the transportation sector. Traditional approaches, in which physical infrastructure is the primary tool for reducing emissions from car mediated transportation, are not sufficient to achieve the ambitious environmental goals at global and national levels. Thus, new methods must be considered and one alternative is to study how changes in user behaviour can result in reduced car use and thereby contribute to sustainable transportation systems. Driving children to and from sports activities is often included as one of the reasons why families with children feel the need to have access to their own car in a greater extent than other population groups. The overall purpose of this degree project was to, with help from three sports associations in Swedish urban areas of varying size, analyse how driving of children is organized, which structures that support and which reduce the need for driving. The purpose was moreover to generate knowledge about how the individual shapes its travel behaviour based on its spatial and social environment. With the knowledge of this, the goal was to design planning strategies with the aim of reducing car mediated transportation. To achieve the purpose of the study, a combination of several methods was a prerequisite. The methods used in this study were a literature overview, a survey and interviews. The survey was sent to parents of the members of the sports associations and a categorization by driving behaviour was made based on their answers. Interviewees was selected from the categories, to provide qualitative data in a systematic way. The results of the study confirm the problem of driving children, which derives from the fact that a car is considered the most practical mean of transportation to and from sports activities. The study results also indicate that driving of children to sports activities is affected by a number of factors and that these differ between individuals, social and spatial contexts. Additionally, parents in the study demonstrate a potential to coordinate carpooling and thus aid the transition to more sustainable driving behaviour. In order for sport associations to be able to assist this type of behavioural change, a number of Mobility Management measures, inspired by the parents' proposals and the theories included in the literature overview, are presented.