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Mobility is a decisive factor: Travelers see travel and mobility on site as an overall experience.
Strengthen rail travel: Good offers at the destination encourage the decision to travel by train.
Reduce CO₂: A higher proportion of rail travel could noticeably reduce emissions.
Service counts: An expensive baggage delivery service is hardly accepted despite the convenience advantage.
Summary of this study
Mobility accounts for the largest share of CO2 emissions generated by the tourism industry. The extent of CO2 emissions resulting from tourists' long-distance travel depends heavily on the mode of transportation used. To reduce these emissions, destinations should work to encourage a shift from flying and driving to traveling by rail.
This study makes the assumption (hypothesis) that the entire mobility chain, i.e. long-distance travel and mobility at the destination, represents a coherent bundle of services. Using data from a discrete choice experiment, in which respondents are confronted with choice tasks in which they have to select from several alternatives with different attributes and their characteristics, a study was conducted with visitors to a tourist destination in the Austrian Alps. This allows the authors to estimate the effects of attributes of long-distance travel by private vehicle and train (travel time, travel costs, number of transfers) as well as the effects of attributes of local mobility services offered at the destination (frequency of public transport, car sharing, mobility hub).
The results indicate that local mobility services are highly relevant for tourists' choice of transportation and can significantly increase the market share of rail.
Findings from this study
- Destinations should encourage a shift from flying and driving to rail travel.
- The mobility chain, consisting of long-distance travel and mobility at the destination, is viewed by tourists as a coherent bundle of services.
- Local mobility services at the destination are highly relevant for the choice of long-distance transportation. The better the local mobility services, the more likely guests are to opt for a sustainable journey.
- The luggage delivery service was not preferred by the majority of the prices used in the study. Although luggage is cited in many studies as an important reason for not traveling by train, the delivery service proposed in this experiment with the given pricing showed an aversion among the respondents. The authors attribute this to the fact that the proposed price was considered "too high".
- A shift towards more rail travel holds considerable potential for reducing CO2 emissions. Based on the conservative assumption that rail travel causes at least 50% fewer emissions than car travel (based on 100 km per person), an increase in rail travel from 14% to 24% would result in a reduction in CO2 emissions of 5 percentage points from the tourism destination's perspective.