Research Note : Scheduling Trips during the Slack Season – An Aspect of the Economics of Seasonal Tourism

Abstract

The trip-scheduling problem faced by firms providing transport to tourists visiting a specific location in the slack season has received scant theoretical attention in the tourism literature. The author therefore conducts a stochastic analysis of the problem of trip scheduling during the slack season. He describes first a general model that accounts for the common features of sightseeing trips to city attractions and to locations such as fjords and lakes. Second, he determines the long-run fraction of time for which the transport-providing firm is unable to satisfy the demand for trips. Third, he ascertains the long-run fraction of demand that is lost to the transport-providing firm. Finally, he generalizes the analysis and considers the case in which a key, exogenously given variable is random and not constant.