Exploring the Potential of Hub Airports and Airlines to Convert Stopover Passengers into Stayover Visitors: Evidence from Singapore

Abstract

This thesis examines the potential of transfer hubs and affiliated airlines, through selected services and facilities, to stimulate future stayover visits by stopover passengers, thereby securing new market opportunities for the host destination. Since the transit region is often regarded as a taken-for granted non-discretionary space which the tourist must cross to reach their final destination, it is usually neglected by most tourism researchers and very few studies have been conducted focusing on this area. Nevertheless, the transit component significantly influences local landscapes and economies. Additionally, some transfer hub facilities in the transit region are now being marketed to transit passengers as tourism attractions in their own right, thus blurring the distinction between the transit and destination components of Leiper’s basic whole tourism system model. Transfer hubs, where stopover-to-stayover conversion can potentially occur, need to be recognised explicitly as a distinctive part of the transit region in Leiper’s model. It is apparent that certain facilities and services provided by the airport and airlines also possess, through their conversion potential, some characteristics of a destination. They are no longer simple facilities in the transit region only providing utilitarian transport services for the tourists. Concurrently, neither meets the definition normally associated with ‘tourist attractions’. Occupying the blurred boundaries between the transit region and the destination region, these facilities and services can be described as a type of ‘quasi-destination’.