Same, Same, But Different: The Influence of Children in Asian Family Travel

Abstract

Family tourism is predicted to grow at a faster rate than all other forms of leisure travel. Literature on family decision-making in tourism contexts has shown the growing influence of children. However, family decision-making has largely been studied by western researchers, with very little research undertaken from Asian perspectives. Against a background of increasing numbers of travellers from East Asia and South-East Asia, the purpose of this chapter is the explore the key cultural values in terms of children’s influence on travel decision-making by Asian families. Seven families based in Brisbane participated in group interviews. Findings showed that Asian children had a heavy influence on their family destination selection. Parents were often willing to compromise in favour of their children when there were conflicts in interest. However, the children had very little direct input or contribution toward the decision-making process. The emergent themes were underpinned by notions of collectivism and authoritarian parenting styles commonly seen in Asian culture, with the presence of children appearing to intensify collectivist attributes, inadvertently adding to the complexity of family decision-making. This chapter provides destination marketers insights into strategic targeting of Asian families. More importantly, this chapter makes important contributions to the literature on the influence of youth in family tourism; specifically addressing the lack of cross-cultural research in this particular subfield of tourism studies.