Capturing Long-Distance Travel

Long distance travel, say journeys to destination more than 100 km away from home, is for most persons a rare event, although associated with a large share of their annual travel distances reflecting the benefits of their holidays or other leisure activities. From a social and environmental perspective thia travel segment has dispproportionate impact in terms of miles travelled and economic and social costs, but it is also the prerequisite for the fast growing tourism industry and the economic benefits derived from it. Travel and tourism research has therefore recently concentrated attention on the issues associated with long-distance travel. This book discusses the basic issue of how to properly survey the general population about this type of travel. It becomes clear quite quickly that the traditional approaches tested in urban and daily mobility contexts do not fully transfer into this subject area. The book reports the results of two associated Europena Union 4th Framework Programme projects, which had the task of developing suitable methods and technologies for this type of survey. It also includes other related on-going work, which contributes to the issues addressed. The book is loosely divided into two parts. The first part develops the survey method, which the projects recommended, against the background of their empirical and concept-oriented work. The second part discusses the various statistical and technological innovations, which the projects developed in areas such as weighting and imputation, survey sampling, web-based and computer-based surveys. The final recommendations outline the form and content of an European survey of long-distance travel.