Using the Analytic Hierarchy Process to Examine a Travel Destination for a Parent-Child Trip

Research Background and Motives

Surveys of the Tourism Bureau, MOTC (2014), indicate that married and single persons show distinctive differences in their decision criteria for choosing the main recreational activities of a trip, planning travel destinations, and accommodation choices. While choosing a travel destination, Taiwanese people primarily consider the convenience of transportation, delicious food, and the preference of accompanying children on a trip. It indicates that a growing number of people have gradually put children’s preference as an important consideration in the process of planning a trip.

Some studies have argued that in the course of parent-child leisure interactions, the father experiences greater freedom and inner gratification than the mother, which reveals that gender role differences have an impact on the frequency of parent-child interactions and the ultimate recreational experiences.

Most of the current studies on travel discuss people’s motives and needs to travel, while few studies particularly focus on parent-child travel. Nevertheless, the annual travel times of parents and children, their travel frequency, their participation in travel activities, and percentage of two-day travel make up a considerable percentage of all domestic travel. This discrepancy initiated one of the motives to conduct this study.

The phenomenon of a low-birth rate results from the deconstruction and reconstruction of the social structure, as well as the evolution of modern people’s concepts regarding marriage and family. In such a social trend, each child is valuable to the parents, and each family has been spending more money on their children. Studies have pointed out that women are often the family trip planners and executors. As such, it is worth exploring women’s needs and decision criteria in evaluating travel destinations, which lead to in the second motive of this study.

Research Purposes

Based on the research background and motives, this study intends to design a questionnaire of married women’s decision criteria for choosing a travel destination for a parent-child trip. The research purposes of this study are as follows:

• 1.

  To understand the characteristics of parent-child trips organized by married women.

• 2.

  To investigate the relative weight that married women place on each decision criterion for choosing a travel destination.

• 3.

  To provide relevant organizations and businesses in the tourism industry with a reference for planning a marketing and promotional strategy for parent-child tours.

Research Process

Based on the research purposes, this study first examined the background information in relation to the arrangement of a parent-child trip by married women. After consulting relevant literature, this study constructed a preliminary hierarchical structure, designed a Delphi Survey questionnaire, carried out the survey, confirmed the hierarchy of married women’s decision criteria for choosing a travel destination for a parent-child trip, designed an analytic hierarchy process (AHP) questionnaire based on the confirmed hierarchy, and carried out the survey. After completed questionnaire copies were returned, Excel 2010 was used to analyze the collected data, used the analysis as the grounds for this study’s results and discussions, and drafted this study’s conclusions and suggestions.