En Route Surveys Chapter 38 Research Methodologies

Introduction  Travel industry managers must have timely information about their changing travel markets in order not to be left behind by their rapidly growing industry  Some of the information is obtained from:  Financial reports: reflecting the health of the industry, such a s annual reports from airlines, hotel chains, and railroads.  Traffic Reports: such as vehicle and passenger counts  Economic Indicators: past, present, and forecast

Introduction cont….  Population Surveys: household and telephone surveys of people in their homes  En Route Surveys: surveys of travelers at various stages of their trips away from home: riding in planes, automobiles, buses, autos, or ships; visiting attractions or stopping over at hotels or motels  En Route surveys are cost effective and therefore popular travel-industry tool used by travel managers everywhere

Survey Costs  En Route surveys are more likely to be locally funded for local interests  The costs of en route surveys can be controlled by careful design of the sample selection procedures and efficient gathering of only the information that is most cogent to filling the information void that gives rise to the need for the survey

Household Surveys vs. En Route Surveys  House hold surveys are more familiar to the public than en route surveys, in part because almost everyone has a chance of being included in a household survey, while en route surveys are encountered by only a part of the population that makes significant trips each year  The people selected for inclusion in a household survey proceeds through various stages of sampling  Some people selected for inclusion in the survey may be interviewed by a survey representative, by mailing questionnaires to the households, or by a telephone survey.

En Route Methodology  En route survey plans often proceed through two or three stages of selection:  The first stage is usually a sample drawn from a time/place domain  The second stage involves a selection of “schedules” within the time/place domains  The third might be a selection of passengers  The information might be collected from self completion questionnaires or by interviewers on the en route sight

Users of En Route Surveys  These surveys have been used by airlines for over 30 years  Also used by:  Automobile travel markets  Bus terminal patronage  Passenger train market  Cruise ship  Visitors to national parks and attractions

Considering a first Survey  The process of considering a survey would bring into focus some factors that had only been vaguely perceived before the effort is made to get a better fix on the market place  The next step might then be to describe the characteristics that provide the leverage needed to sway the market  Together these two factors are the cornerstones of an en route survey proposal

Sampling Error  The sampling error describes a mathematical concept that relates the size of the error in estimates from samples to the size of those samples  These estimates of error are based on the assumption that the sample is drawn at random  In practice, the sampling error estimate is much more useful as a relative measure of what happens as the size of the sample goes up, and as the cost increases.  It points the way of getting the most value from the survey

Bias  The selection procedure are designed to assure that random choices are made at each stage of the selection process- that the sampling is done objectively and that bias does not creep in.  During the implementation phase of the survey, it is necessary to keep careful records and details of how the selection procedures performed during the course of the survey  As long as failures remain small, the possibility of significant bias in the estimates is also small

Bias cont….  A biased sample can be flagged by high non- response rates, but not all samples with high non-response rates are biased  Another type of bias can enter into surveys estimates if the questionnaire contains questions that evoked biased answers or inadvertently wrong answers

Questionnaire  The choice of a survey instrument – a record sheet for observations, a self-completion questionnaire, or one administered by an interviewer- depends on the specifics of the survey objectives and the environment at the time making the observations  A self completion questionnaire will probably yield the most thoughtful responses  A questionnaire used by an interviewer who engages the respondent in a dialogue shifts some of the burden of structure and phrasing to the training program for interviewers

Randomness  When the elements drawn at each stage of the survey design are selected with known probabilities, the result is a random sample  There are many methods for drawing probability samples, all of which are characterized by objective selection procedures at each stage

Sleuthing for Bias  One way to unveil a hidden bias in surveys with high non-response rates is to take an estimate or a set of estimates from the survey and compare it to like statistics from an extraneous source  Surveys, however, are usually devoted to collecting information that is available from no other source, so finding comparable parameters from someplace else is not easy.

Conclusion  En route surveys can provide a powerful tool for effective management of growth and development in the travel industry