Online Travel Planning and College Students

SUMMARY In the United States, spring break travel for college students has become a significant business for many tourism destinations. The purpose of the study was to investigate college students' online travel behavior in vacation planning through selected travel Websites. This exploratory study found that the respondents generally leaned toward satisfaction with their online travel planning experiences. Results of multinomial logistic regression indicated that the easiness of meeting the vacation budget and comfortability of providing credit card information increase the probability of college students' satisfaction with the online vacation planning process. The study also found that the more time that was used to search for an online vacation the less the likelihood of achieving higher levels of satisfaction. The study concludes with a discussion on marketing and business implications applicable to online consumer behavior.

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