Factors Determining ROPO Behaviors of Travel Agencies Customers during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Tourist decision-making has been heavily affected by the pandemic crisis, which increases the complexity of the tourism business operations and shakes the foundations of tourism sustainable development. Thus, studying and comprehension of tourists’ behaviors, including the purchasing decisions, and incorporating this knowledge into the strategies of tourism companies, has a key importance to the organizations’ survival during hard times. The article contains the characteristics of tourist behavior schemes related to decision-making in buying package holidays during COVID-19 crisis. The study was based on analysis of the results of a computer assisted web interview using the CAWI method, conducted among 1502 Poles using the classification tree method (the R statistical package and the RPART library). Research allowed us to identify the four purchase decision-making patterns and to describe four segments of holidaymakers’ buying according to these patterns. In the profiling process, nine demographic and social variables were used, including gender, age, education, residence, marital status, number of all household members, minor children in a household, assessment of own financial standing, and professional situation. The results of the analysis confirm the existence of a relationship between (1) the research online purchase offline behavior and the age, the number of children under 18 in the household, and the marital status of the package holidays buyers, (2) the research offline purchase online behavior and the age and the number of children up to 18 in the households of the buyers of tourist packages, (3) the research offline purchase offline behavior and the age, the number of children under 18 in the household, the assessment of the financial situation, and sex of the buyers of tourist packages, and (4) the research offline purchase online behavior and the age and assessment of financial situation of package holidays purchasers.