The Influence of Weather on Tourist Booking Behavior

In this research, we look at the influence of weather on tourism and specifically on consumers’ travel decisions. A lot of research has been done about weathers influence on consumers buying and decision behavior in the consumer behavior research, e.g. bad weathers influence on sales and store visits (e.g. Steele, 1951). In the tourism area the influence of weather on consumers’ decision-making has seen very scarce research, and studies have focused primarily on how weather influences tourist behavior at the destination (e.g. Becken, 2012; Martin, 2012).
In our study we will focus on climate and weather condition in the home country of the tourist, and on how these conditions influence buying decisions when considering buying a ticket to a destination for tourism. We will make propositions regarding the relationship between weather and the purchase of flight tickets and destination choice´s and develop a conceptual framework with mediators to understand consumer travel purchase behavior depending on weather conditions in the homeland. Weather conditions will be conceptualized as the degree of sunshine and temperature. The purpose is to deepen our understanding of impact of weather conditions on tourists booking behavior. Thereby we aim to provide insights to help guide the tourism and airline industries. Our aim is to perform a literature review and based on this to construct a testable conceptual framework, which is capable of informing future research, including theoretical and empirical considerations.