Students' summer tourism: Determinants of length of stay (LOS)

Highlights

• This is the first study of its kind on students' length of stay (LOS) at vacation destinations.

• Daily expenditures, booking time, tourism/trip motives, trip month and gender explain much variation in LOS.

• Trips with the return date already set before the trip takes place are of shorter duration.

Abstract

Studies scrutinizing the economic aspects of student tourism at the micro-level are rare in the literature. Set against this background, the present study examines the variation in a sample of Norwegian students' length of stay at summer vacation destinations in 2014. Three estimation methods – an OLS regression model, a Weibull survival model and a zero-truncated negative binomial regression model – provide qualitatively similar results regarding how a number of determinants affect length of stay. In particular, the results show that daily trip costs, booking time, tourism and trip motives, trip month and gender explain much of the variation in length of stay. Of special interest is the comparison of two segments differing on when trip duration is determined: the “pre-fixed” returners (75% of the sample) and the “open” returners (25%). In this regard, the results suggest that the “open” returners stay longer on their trips than the “pre-fixed” ones. Finally, the study provides some implications for future length of stay research.

Introduction

Academics have noted the important historical relationship between engaging in tourism and being a student (e.g. Thrane, 2008, Varasteh et al., 2014). Yet despite this close connection, empirical studies of the student tourism market did not take off until the 1990s according to Field (1999), with Hobson and Josiam's study (1992) one of the first. With recognition of the growing importance of student travel to the tourist economy (see Thrane, 2015a), a number of papers have been published examining the tourism behavior of students (for a review, see Varasteh et al., 2014).¹ While this literature scrutinizes many issues, little attention has been devoted to the micro-level economic aspects of student tourism. In fact, the recent study by Thrane (2015a) was the first to examine the variation in students' tourism expenditures, highlighting the need for more research on economic topics. The present study is thus about the factors determining students' length of stay (LOS) or trip duration. Since participation in tourism in practically all cases entails costs, the LOS decision is at the end of the day made on economic grounds although other reasons might come into play as well. Against this backdrop, the present study takes a closer look at what extends or shortens students' LOS at summer vacation destinations. From the perspective of destination marketing organizations (DMOs), knowledge in this regard is ultimately crucial information for market segmentation purposes (Yang & Zhang, 2015). The novel focus of the study evolves around the question of whether students deciding on the return date before the trip actually takes place differ in LOS from those who come to a decision at some point along the way. The study also addresses how a number of other well-known determinants affect the variation in students' LOS.

The empirical context for the study is the students attending a Norwegian university college and their vacation trips during the summer 2014. The next section (2) outlines some of the most relevant studies of specific market segments' LOS/trip duration. Section 3 presents the determinants (i.e. regressors) of LOS in extant research and summarizes the purpose of the study in detail. Section 4 describes the data, variables and econometric model specifications and Section 5 presents the results. Section 6 discusses the most important findings, offers some implications and concludes.