Exploring the temporal travel choices: a joint modelling of how long to travel and when

Many tourism travel decisions are interrelated. From modelling viewpoint incorporating these interrelations is important for understanding the consequences of exogenous shocks, as well as the intended and unintended consequences of policy. This paper addresses two tourist choices in the temporal dimension that were previously only handled as if they were mutually exclusive. The paper adopts a discrete-continuous model framework to simulate tourists’ behaviours in selecting travel seasons (choice model) and associated trip duration (accelerated failure time model) and estimates the correlation between these two tourism decisions conditional on the covariates. The empirical analysis is based on Australian domestic tourism data and reveal the factors influencing both decisions as well as those that influence only one or the other. The model results, which is tested with data from select years between 1999-2018, including years of significant exogenous shocks, show mixed evidence of stability and changes in the parameters. Building on this evidence, the paper concludes with underlying temporal choice behaviours of tourists that may be of relevance during- and post-COVID19 environment.