Air Transport – A Tourism Perspective

Anne Graham, Frederic Dobruszkes

• Publisher: Elsevier
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780128128589
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Transportation & Navigation
• Index: Technology & Engineering

Air Transport: A Tourism Perspective provides rigorous insights into the current complexities, synergies and conflicts within air transportation and tourism, presenting a balanced, comprehensive, contemporary, and global analysis that thoroughly examines the links between theory and practice. The book offers readers a multi-sector, global perspective on the practical implications of the link between air transport and tourism. By using a novel approach, it systematically explores the successive stages of a tourist's trip—investigating reasons for flying, the airport experience, airline industry structures, competition and regulation, and air transportation and destination interrelationships.

In addition, the book explores current and salient debates on such issues as the influence of traveling to visit friends and family, the role of charters versus low cost carriers, public subsidies to support airport development, and much more.

• Presents insights from an international team of expert contributors with proven research and publication experience in their specialty area
• Includes cutting-edge analyses based on original research that identifies emerging research directions and policy and managerial implications
• Utilizes a multidisciplinary approach to fully explore theoretical and policy concepts and their effect on air transportation and tourism development
• Provides case studies from around the globe in each chapter

Chapter 1

Introduction

Anne Graham*; Frédéric Dobruszkes^† * University of Westminster, London, United Kingdom
^† Free University of Brussels (ULB), Brussels, Belgium

Chapter Outline

• 1.1 Introduction
• 1.2 Key Sources of Literature
• 1.3 Establishing Common Definitions
• 1.4 Structure of the Book
  • 1.4.1 Part I: The Rationale for Flying
  • 1.4.2 Part II: Before Travelling—Choosing Transport Modes, Airlines and Airports
  • 1.4.3 Part III: On the Go—Accessing Airports and the Airline and Airport Experience
  • 1.4.4 Part IV: Reaching the Destination and Attractions
• References

1.1 Introduction

This book provides a comprehensive, contemporary, and global analysis of the role of air transport for today’s tourists. Long-haul tourists have very little choice but to travel by air (or go elsewhere), but air transport is an increasingly important mode for short-haul tourists as well, being encouraged by a more competitive airline industry and evolving airline business models. However, the relationship between air transport and tourism is complex and works both ways, with good air accessibility being a fundamental condition for the development of many tourist destinations, at the same time as the growth of tourism demand is essential for the well-being of many airlines and airports.

The book has a close fit within Elsevier’s Contemporary Issues in Air Transport series as it is multidisciplinary, with an international authorship and content, and it makes both a theoretical and empirical contribution to knowledge. It is aimed to appeal to academic and practitioner audiences of both the air transport and tourism sectors, and particularly to those who are seeking a more rigorous insight into the current day complexities, synergies, and potential conflicts present within the relationship between the two sectors. Moreover, the issues covered are generally not limited to certain geographic regions and so the book has a truly global approach which is enforced by having a range of contributors from many places in the world.

The book adopts a novel and original approach to addressing these issues by systematically exploring the successive stages of the tourist’s trip by investigating reasons for flying, then travelling decisions related to transport modes and airline/airport choice, then accessing airports and the airline/airport experience, and finally reaching the destination and attractions. This enables current and salient debates to be explored, for example, related to the underestimated influence of visiting friends and relatives (VFR) travel, the potential for self-connection, the influence of technology, the role of charters versus Low-Cost Carriers (LCCs), and public subsidies to support airport development, as well as many others. Cutting edge analysis is presented with future research directions, and policy and management implications, identified.

Therefore, the book has three key features to enable the acquisition of balanced and comprehensive knowledge of the role of air transport within tourism, and a thorough awareness of the links between theory and practice. These are as follows:

1. 1. An analysis based on the successive stages of the tourist trip providing a full appreciation of all critical issues related to the air transport and tourism relationship.
2. 2. A multidisciplinary (social sciences including geography and economics, planning, management, marketing) approach in order to fully appreciate the theoretical and policy concepts underpinning air transport and tourism development.
3. 3. A multisector (airports, airlines, destination organisations, travel distributors) and global (developed countries, emerging markets) coverage to fully explore the practical implications of the linkages between air transport and tourism.

1.2 Key Sources of Literature

The separate published literature related to the air transport and tourism sectors is extensive. However, most air transport publications do not explore in any detail the specific characteristics of tourists and the tourism industry, whilst tourism publications tend to treat air transport as one of a number of industry sectors that need consideration. Although a few texts do investigate the general relationship between transport and tourism, there is limited focus on air transport, and none of these offer a totally up-to-date and critical view of relevant contemporary issues. A review later briefly discusses the key sources of literature related to the air transport and tourism relationship and in doing so demonstrates that there is no current publication that deals exclusively and comprehensively with the integral and contemporary role that air transport plays for today’s tourists. Hence this book is uniquely placed to fill this major gap.

One of the first insightful books related to the air transport and tourism relationship was jointly published by Routledge and the United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) and was entitled Aviation and Tourism Policies: Balancing the Benefits (Wheatcroft, 1994). As the name suggests this only focused on policy issues, such as regulation, liberalisation, and protectionism, using an interesting case study approach with a novel analytical framework to evaluate the policies. A more recent unique comprehensive publication in this area is Aviation and Tourism: Implications for Leisure Travel, which in addition to considering industry and policies implications, pays attention to the broader external impacts and includes a number of case studies from different parts of the world (Graham et al., 2008). Overall, there is a greater range of tourism and general transport books (e.g. Lumsdon and Page, 2004; Duval, 2007; Page, 2009; Gross and Klemmer, 2014) but as stated before these only give limited coverage of air transport issues. In existence there is also the grey literature typically produced by government departments, industry organisations, or consultants that again touch on some aspects of the air transport and tourism relation. A notable example is the UNWTO’s Global Report on Aviation (UNWTO, 2012). In addition, it is noticeable that recent books focused on air transport geography or economics (Bowen, 2010; Goetz and Budd, 2014; Doganis, 2010) do not comprehensively discuss the relationships with tourism, even though the issue appears in a scattered way throughout the pages.

There is greater coverage of the air transport and tourism relationship within academic journals. A few authors have chosen to look quite generally at some key and salient issues (Bieger and Wittmer, 2006; Duval, 2013) or to assess the general causality between direct air services and tourism demand (Koo et al., 2017). A more specific popular theme for analysis, considering case studies from all over the world, is the impact of air policy, especially regulation and liberalisation, on tourism flows (Papatheodorou, 2002; Forsyth, 2006; Warnock-Smith and Morrell, 2008; Warnock-Smith and O’Connell, 2011; Dobruszkes and Mondou, 2013; Zhang and Findlay, 2014; Dobruszkes et al., 2016). This links to other related research that has looked at the role played by airline strategy, competition, and alliance strategy in tourism development (Morley, 2003; Lian and Denstadli, 2010; Liasidou, 2012: O’Connell and Warnock-Smith, 2012). Another common research area is the influence of LCCs on tourism demand (Castillo-Manzano et al., 2011; Rey et al., 2011; Tsui, 2017; Young and Whang, 2011; Farmaki and Papatheodorou, 2015; Whyte and Prideaux, 2008). Airport and destination development has also been considered in relation to tourism growth (Almeida, 2011; Lohmann et al., 2009; Halpern, 2008; Costa et al. 2010). Whilst none of these articles cover the extensive range of issues considered in one place by this book, they are an invaluable complementary resource for developing more in-depth specific knowledge. (For a more extensive literature review on air transport and tourism please, refer to Spasojevic et al., 2018.)

1.3 Establishing Common Definitions

Most modes of transport serve other markets as well as the tourism market. For example, many railways handle a high proportion of commuter traffic, whilst the private car gets used predominately for local journeys for pleasure (e.g. recreation, visiting friends) and necessity (e.g. work, food shopping). However, air travel is somewhat unique as it deals almost exclusively with the tourism market, that is, if freight demand is excluded, and if established international definitions of tourism are accepted. This is partly because the natu...

Table of contents

• Cover image
• Title page
• Table of Contents
• Copyright
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Contributors
• Authors’ Biography
• Series Editors’ Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Chapter 1: Introduction
• Part I: The Rationale for Flying
• Part II: Before Travelling: Choosing Transport Modes, Airlines, and Airports
• Part III: On the Go: Accessing Airports and the Airline and Airport Experience
• Part IV: Reaching the Destination and Attractions
• Index