A Study on Travel Agency Selection Factors and Demographic Influences among Outbound Tourists from Telangana State

Selecting an appropriate travel agency is most important for outbound tourists due to higher complexity, dependency and uncertainty in services like visa assistance, air ticketing, accommodation, foreign exchange and travel insurance when compared with domestic tourists. We can find a number of studies on travel agency selection in the international context, such as Singapore, Malaysia, China, Japan, Dubai, Sri Lanka, etc., but limited empirical studies were found in the Indian context, especially Telangana. This study is focused on finding out the important factors considered while selecting a travel agency in Telangana, and to study the influence of demographic variables on these factors. This study employed a quantitative, descriptive and analytical approach for conducting the study.
The primary data were collected from a total of 90 respondents who travelled on tours from Telangana (Hyderabad and Nalgonda) and used the services of travel agencies. A structured questionnaire was designed with two sections, i.e., demographic variables and factors related to travel agency selection, on a Likert scale, and was used to collect the primary data. This study adopted the snowball sampling method for collecting primary data. The primary data were analysed with the help of SPSS. Here, Cronbach's alpha was used for the reliability of the scale; mean, standard deviation and Relative Importance Index (RII) were used for ranking the travel agency selection factors, and the Mann-Whitney U test & Kruska-Wallis H test were used for demographic differences. The scale showed high reliability, i.e. Cronbach's alpha is 0.895. RII analysis showed factors like Years of Experience & Past Performance, Discounts & Offers, 24/7 Service Availability, Customised Services and Value for Money were found to be more important and Instalment-based payments, Advertisements and Accessibility were found least important. Demographic variables like gender, age and education have no significant difference on travel agency selection factors. The results suggest that the travel agencies should focus on economic benefits, credibility and continued support through a universal strategy rather than focusing on demographic segmentation.

Outbound Tourism, Travel Agency Selection, Relative Importance Index (RII) and Value for Money.

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