How Can Rail Use for Leisure and Tourism Be Promoted? Using Leisure and Mobility Orientations to Segment Swiss Railway Customers

Abstract

This study aims to explore how customer segments are characterised by leisure and mobility orientations. By means of a survey, Swiss rail customers’ socioeconomic and trip profiles as well as attitudes towards taking the rail in their leisure time were collected. Respondents were free to take part in the survey by telephone or online, resulting in 1235 full interviews. A principal component analysis followed by segmentation through cluster analysis was conducted to derive their socio-economic and trip profiles and collect data on their attitudes towards using rail in their leisure time. Five railway customer segments were established, each demonstrating typical leisure orientations and specific attitudes towards the use of rail in leisure time and on tourist trips. This paper contributes to understanding the salient preferences of each segment and provides transport companies with clear indications for developing market-oriented offerings.

Motivations, attitudes and intentions towards luxury dining in airplane themed restaurants: moderating roles of desire to fly, desire for luxury and FOMO

“…For instance, Lam and Hsu (2004) demonstrated that intention to visit Hong Kong was heightened by the positive attitude towards this destination driven by their beliefs that it is a place for shopping, sightseeing and novel experience. Specifically, for studies relating to travel in a liminal space such as luxury cruise and railway tourism, results also exhibit that attitude imposes a positive influence towards behavioural intentions involving readiness to pay a premium price for the experience (Ioana-Daniela et al, 2018) and also increase frequency of patronage (Dang and von Arx, 2021). To the best of our knowledge, there is no known research to examine attitude towards a domestic tourism product such as JHTI 6,5 ATR dining (as opposed to travel destination).…”

Railway and Tourism: A Systematic Literature Review

“…As a product, railway tourism should seek to enhance travel experiences, including nostalgia, a sense of history and authenticity. Furthermore, in the experiential travel scene, it is necessary to implement services that can respond to travellers' expectations [16][17][18][19]. These expectations rise when there is an association with the word "luxury" [20,21].…”