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ABSTRACT
Recently, cruise tourism has drawn public interest in the Republic of Korea. In this study, we attempt to analyze people’s preferences regarding the attributes of cruise tourism, such as duration, accommodation, services, and cost. Thus, we applied a choice experiment (CE) to measure the marginal willingness to pay (MWTP) for each attribute. The results show that the coefficients of the attributes of onboard activities are positive and statistically significant. MWTPs for increasing the cabin level from an inside to an ocean view and for increasing the level of onboard services from 4-star to 6-star are South Korean Won (KRW) 1,095,760 (USD 954.8) and KRW 671,264 (USD 584.9) respectively. Comparison of all the MWTP estimates indicates that people prefer onboard activities rather than visiting foreign ports of call above all other attributes. This study is expected to provide tourism managers with useful information for designing cruise tourism products that meet travelers’ needs.
Notes
1. The government aims at growing the domestic demand of cruise tourism and supporting the operation of Korean cruise ships.
2. An anonymous referee suggested conducting a similar study using data collected from cruise passengers. The authors think that our study can benefit from further investigation into the issue. However, unfortunately we cannot obtain survey data from cruise passengers. The original purpose of the CE survey was to gather information, that is, the public’s WTP for the cruise tourism, on the potential travelers, not on cruise passengers. Thus, we cannot follow the suggestion here. In future, the issue needs to be dealt with more carefully.
3. If the market is not a perfect competitive market, the market price would not be the willingness-to-pay for tourism. Considering that there are no perfect competitive market, it is necessary to estimate the shadow price for seizing the true value.
4. An anonymous referee mentioned that since only 2% of the respondents have cruise experience, the majority of them may not know that a suite cabin is an ocean view cabin of larger size and with more facilities.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Min-Kyu Lee
Min-Kyu Lee, Port Research Division, Korea Maritime Institute, KBS Media-Center 16F, 45 Maebongsan-Ro, Mapo-Gu, Seoul, 121–915, Republic of Korea (E-mail: [email protected]).
Seung-Hoon Yoo
Seung-Hoon Yoo, Graduate School of Energy & Environment, Seoul National University of Science & Technology, 232 Gongreung-Ro, Nowon-Gu, Seoul, 139–743, Republic of Korea (E-mail: [email protected]).