Quantifying Tourists’ Long Distance Destination Search Geographies: Balancing Lengths of Stay and the Time It Takes to Get There

Abstract

While research pertaining to leisure trips and their many components, such as travel times, time at destination and travel distances exist, the relationships between them have not been studied. The academic community has also explored leisure trips and the specific factors that influence destination choice. However, these factors have not been studied together, and their relationships have not been tracked, specifically the relationships between travel times and time at destination (Long-Distance Trip Efficiency Ratio, or ER) and travel distance and time at destination (Long-Distance Trip Coverage Ratio, or CR). Therefore, this work aims to understand the relationship between these variables, along with the specific factors that influence travel distances. To properly study these relationships, data collected from the 2024 National Household Travel Survey along with the home and destination characteristics were used. In total, 4,148 trips were analyzed for this study. This data was used to prove that a ratio between these two relationships can be calculated, and individuals’ travel time-related decisions are most statistically influenced by the characteristics of the destination and trip purpose. This research indicates that the tourism and travel industry can use travel characteristics, household characteristics, and origin and destination zone characteristics to accurately anticipate where and how far individuals will travel for vacation .