Destination travel patterns: An examination and modeling of tourist patterns on Vancouver Island, British Columbia

Abstract

This article examines tourist travel patterns at the meso level of a destination region. The destination region used for the study was Vancouver Island, British Columbia. A number of hypotheses were examined regarding the summer travel patterns in this relatively closed destination region. These included an assessment of the distance decay concept, as applied to the tourist volumes associated with increasing distance from the principal gateways, and an examination of area familiarity as an explanation of the distortion between reported and actual travel behavior. The actual travel patterns were subsequently used to create a probability matrix of future trip behavior for island visitors. The revealed travel patterns and the probability matrix are used to suggest some future tourism development and planning strategies for Vancouver Island.

Keywords:

• Destination region
• reported and actual travel
• probability matrix
• tourism planning