Download En Route Surveys Chapter 38

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:
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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 nonresponse 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