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The purpose of this study is to fill a gap in literature with a meta-analysis of previous studies assessing the decision-making processes of travellers when choosing holiday destinations in times of crisis.

This study presents here an abductive analysis of the findings of 737 peer-reviewed studies published in leading hospitality and tourism journals between 1978 and 2020. The studies in question concentrate on tourist typologies and behaviours when making destination choices in times of crisis, and the garnered data was subjected to a computer-aided data analysis adopting a thematic analysis technique, making use of Leximancer software.

The data was subjected to a thematic analysis and clustered under five main categories based on the distribution of articles by publication year, research topic, author contributions, articles by journal and articles by country (e.g. tourist typology, travellers’ decision-making, holiday decision-making, tourist decision-making, destination choice, traveller behaviour and vacation decision-making).

The limitations of this study include its inclusion only of articles listed in the SCOPUS, Web of Science and ScienceDirect databases. This study makes a critical assessment of the current gaps in literature and proposes questions to be raised in future studies.

This study proposes several topics for future investigation that are considered necessary to close crucial gaps in our understanding of the tourism sector’s response to behavioural trends. The authors’ intention in this regard is to increase the scholarly awareness of decision-making models relevant to destination choice by linking tourist typologies and the behaviour exhibited before, during and after crises.

Independent travelers are those vacationers who have booked only a minimum of their transportation and accommodation arrangements prior to departure on the vacation. Independent travel is an important and growing sector of worldwide tourism. Choice of vacation itinerary for the independent vacation represents a complex series of decisions regarding purchase of multiple leisure and tourism services. This chapter builds and tests a model of independent traveler decision-making for choice of vacation itinerary. The research undertaken employs a two-phase, inductive–deductive case study design. In the deductive phase, the researcher interviewed 20 travel parties vacationing in New Zealand for the first time. The researcher interviewed respondents at both the beginning and the end of their New Zealand vacations. The study compares pre-vacation research and plans, and actual vacation behaviors, on a case-by-case basis. The study examines case study narratives and quantitative measures of crucial variables. The study tests two competing models of independent traveler decision-making, using a pattern-matching procedure. This embedded research design results in high multi-source, multi-method validity for the supported model. The model of the Independent Vacation as Evolving Itinerary suggests that much of the vacation itinerary experienced in independent travel is indeed unplanned, and that a desire to experience the unplanned is a key hedonic motive for independent travel. Rather than following a fixed itinerary, the itinerary of an independent vacation evolves as the vacation proceeds. The independent traveler takes advantage of serendipitous opportunities to experience a number of locations, attractions and activities that they had neither actively researched nor planned.

The article examines the entrepreneurial decision-making in the Greek tourism and hospitality sector during a period of an economic crisis.

The nationwide study includes the responses of 503 entrepreneurs engaged in the Greek travel, tourism and hospitality industry. The research employs fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA), and examines trust, enterprising negotiation power, tourism decision-making considerations and crisis effects. It also includes the categorical data of operational mode and company type.

The analysis has generated three different pathways for entrepreneurial decision-making during crisis in the Greek tourism and hospitality sector. These pathways are (1) crisis conditions, (2) enterprising operations and focus and (3) enterprising capabilities.

Due to the limited employment of fsQCA in the tourism sector, its full potential is still to be explored.

The study provides three different pathways that Greek tourism entrepreneurs select for their decision-making according to the characteristics of their firms and their market orientation.

Theoretically, the study contributes by enhancing understanding of entrepreneurial decision-making during periods of crisis. In the methodological domain, the research employs fsQCA, which has only recently started to be used in tourism and hospitality, and generally the service sector.

This paper aims to critically review the underlying assumptions and theoretical conceptualizations of duality theories in general. In particular, the paper seeks to augment McCabe et al.’s (2016) reconceptualization of consumer decision-making in tourism. Additionally, the paper offers an integrated duality theory model.

A critical discussion of the basic assumptions, recent advances and constructive criticism of duality theories found in the extant literature prefaces a detailed account of McCabe et al.’s (2016) new general tourist choice model. The author enriches and expands the conceptualization of this model and offers an advanced dual-process theoretical framework for decision-making with a broader range of variables, greater versatility, and suggestions for future research.

The findings indicate mental processes with broader external inputs (stimuli) with possible outputs (decisions/behaviors) warrant inclusion and expansion in a fulsome dual-systems model of tourist decision-making.

This research study adds to the literature of duality theories in consumer decision-making. While factors, contexts, personal preferences and other dimensions in the tourism industry are and will continue to be fluid over time, this study offers an integrated decision-making framework that provides clear linkages that mark pathways for new developments, future research and practitioner applications.

The integrated duality theory framework enables researchers and destination management organizations managers to acquire enhanced explanatory and predictive value of tourism decision-making, which can lead to offering improved products/services. The model’s emphasis on simultaneous engagement of both heuristic and analytic dual processes reflects fundamental human nature; decision-making can be “both/and” as well as “either/or” with heuristic and analytic processes.

The influence of destinations’ poverty on tourism decision-making and, more precisely, destination selection has received scant attention despite the increasing importance of poverty. The purpose of this study is to examine the combination of factors influencing tourists’ destination selection in relation to developed destinations’ rising poverty levels through the adoption of complexity theory.

This study used fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis to examine the combinations of factors that are significant in influencing destination selection whereas necessary condition analysis was used complementarily to evaluate the size effect of the examined conditions. Moreover, semi-structured interviews with industry stakeholders were performed to examine the relationships that describe the generated configurations.

In total, four solutions were generated: the cultural influence and poverty, the destination aspects, the poverty issues and the travel experience and poverty while qualitative data reveal that industry policymakers and practitioners hold different perceptions of tourists’ destination selection process.

Study results show that poverty perceptions influence destination selection. Hence, poverty must be considered in travel behaviour investigations beyond the developing destination context, whereas destinations may select either one or a combination of the generated sufficient configurations when deciding on their tourism development plans.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study examining the effects of developed destinations’ increasing poverty levels on tourism decision-making and specifically on destination selection.

This study aims to explore the relationship between Generation Z (or Gen Z) consumers’ decision-making styles and electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) use in the tourism sector. Drawing on the consumer style inventory (CSI) model and the theory of reasoned action (TRA), the research examines how specific decision-making styles influence Gen Z’s propensity to use eWOM recommendations for accommodation choices.

The study uses structural equation modelling to analyse data collected from 296 Gen Z users of Booking.com. The CSI model is adapted to the analysed context and attributes – impulsive, recreational, sustainable, fashion-conscious and perfectionist attitudes – are examined to determine their impact on eWOM use intention and actual eWOM use.

Three of the hypothesised relationships in the model were validated. Specifically, the results suggest that the attitudes of sustainable and perfectionist consumers influence the intention to use eWOM. Furthermore, use intention is positively associated with the actual use of eWOM.

For marketers and tourism businesses, understanding the decision-making styles of Gen Z can inform the development of targeted marketing strategies that emphasise quality and sustainability. Highlighting these aspects in online reviews and eWOM platforms can enhance engagement with Gen Z consumers.

This research advances the understanding of eWOM behaviour by integrating CSI and TRA theories in the context of Gen Z’s tourism decision-making. It provides empirical evidence on the significant role of perfectionist and sustainable attitudes in shaping eWOM intentions, contributing to the literature on consumer behaviour and digital marketing in tourism.

The choice overload (CO) phenomenon, whereby having many options leads to negative consequences, has been studied widely in psychology and marketing. However, empirical evidence of CO in the tourism context is limited, even though people often encounter numerous choices (e.g., vacation destinations, airfares, hotels, tours) at different stages when planning their holidays. Investigating CO in tourism and hospitality is important because (online) travel advisors are providing tourists with numerous choices, yet they do not know whether or not these decision makers are content after choosing from these large choice sets. This chapter proposes to review and apply insights garnered from the CO literature to tourism research. Accordingly, the chapter proposes five groups of solutions for tourists and travel advisors to avoid CO effects: reducing decision task difficulty, reducing choice-set complexity, reducing preference uncertainty, focusing on decision goals rather than the means to achieve those goals, and adopting appropriate decision-making styles.

This paper aims to respond to a knowledge gap regarding the motivations of medical tourists, the term used to describe persons that travel across borders with the intention of accessing medical care. Commonly cited motivations for engaging in medical tourism are typically based on speculation and provide generalizations for what is a contextualized practice. This research paper aims to complicate the commonly discussed motivations of medical tourists to provide a richer understanding of these motivations and the various contexts in which medical tourists may choose to travel for medical care.

Drawing on semi-structured interviews with 32 former Canadian medical tourists, this study uses the Iso-Ahola’s motivation theory to analyze tourists’ motivations. Quotations from participants were used to highlight core themes relevant to critical theories of tourism.

Participants’ discussions illuminated motivations to travel related to personal and interpersonal seeking as well as personal and interpersonal escaping. These motivations demonstrate the appropriateness of applying critical theories of tourism to the medical tourism industry.

This research is limited in its ability to link various motivations with particular contexts such as medical procedure and personal demographics. However, this study demonstrates that the three commonly cited motivations of medical tourists might oversimplify this phenomenon.

By providing new insight into medical tourists’ motivations, this paper expands the conversation about medical tourists’ decision-making and how this is informed by tourism discourse. This insight may contribute to improved guidance for medical tourism stakeholders for more ethical and safe practices.

This study aims to explore how social media affects decision-making among tourists and whether there is a potential effect of age, which is studied through generations. For this purpose, baby boomers, Gen X, Gen Y and Gen Z tourists are studied and real-time implications are offered.

The study adopts a descriptive and exploratory design where the conceptual model of social media-based decision-making is developed through a review of the literature. Quantitative analysis is conducted on primary data from 600 Indian tourists. This is done using a self-administered questionnaire adopted from Gulati (2022) after checking its validity and reliability. The statistical analysis for hypothesis testing is done using PLS-SEM path modelling on pooled data. To study the categorical moderating effect of generations, partial least squares multigroup analysis (PLS-MGA) is performed as a paired comparison on every successive generation.

After testing every successive younger generation with an older generation through PLS-MGA, none of the pairs found any significant differences in path coefficients, as the values obtained were 0.05 < p < 0.95 for all five paths (SM → NR, SM → IS, SM → E, SM → P, SM → PPB). This indicates all the generations behave in a similar manner irrespective of them being older or younger, and age does not moderate social media’s impact on decision-making among Indian tourists.

The study establishes India as a unique geographical market and suggests tourism marketers to treat all generations at par, irrespective of age, as they behave and interact with social media in a similar manner. But, because this study is restricted to a single geographical location, i.e. India, further regions can be explored for global generalisation. Future research can also explore other demographics for combined, moderated analysis. Findings from the study suggest that marketers should ensure that equal attention is given to all generations as they engage with social media in a similar manner. Targeted marketing using artificial intelligence can help in ensuring custom ads. Personalisation according to generations can also facilitate greater purchases.

The study fills a major population and knowledge gap by exploring a topic that has been highly under-researched. Also, the study adopts an inclusive approach by analysing all the generations, both younger and older, to understand the potential effect of age on moderating the impact that social media has on tourist decision-making. Further, real-time suggestions and implications are offered to tourism marketers with special reference to the Indian tourism industry.

The purpose of this study is to explore under-addressed issues of collaborative participation, decision-making, representation and inclusion in tourism governance in the twin cities of Bryan-College Station in Texas, USA. The study demonstrated that improved tourism governance has the potential to address underrepresented issues and contribute to sustainable community-based tourism (SCBT) success.

Semi-structured, face-to-face interviews were conducted with 40 tourism business owners/managers, key persons in cultural/community organizations, tourism associations, government officials and backstage staff (mainly ethnic minorities) to explore key issues relating to governance, collaborative participation and responsiveness relating to tourism development.

It was found that a collaborative decision-making process existed with significant opportunities for listening to various stakeholders with the majority being happy with how the governing agencies responded to them. However, some expressed concerns regarding participation in decision-making processes, the inclusion of their voices and issues of low job representation. These suggest the need for enhancing collaborative participation, representation and decision-making. Guided by the theory and results of the study, recommendations for more collaborative, responsive and inclusive governance have been suggested.

As one of the few studies exploring the under-addressed issues in tourism governance in SCBT operations, the study is believed to hold significance from the perspectives of sustainable tourism development.