Factors That Affect The Holiday Choice Has Evolved Over...

In conclusion, most evidence is suggesting that tweens, a group of highly experienced tourists between the ages of 8-12, are increasingly becoming a major influence behind family holidays. This age group have usually taken a number of holidays and have visited many different destinations across the globe. As outlined earlier Argyle (1996) makes reference to how a number of factors, age being one of them, have an effect on the holiday-taking decision-making process. This directly links to how tweens are generally now more cultured and have experienced more of life compared to tweens several decades ago. Therefore, combined with McNeal’s (1991) guilt factor theory, evidence suggests that parents are becoming more and more reliant on their†¦show more content†¦These include the initiator, influencer, decider, buyer, user, etc. Although, the husband and wife are generally the family s chief decision-makers, the child s influence cannot be ignored. Assael (1995) noted that children play an important part in family decision-making and their influence varies by product categories and services at different decision stages. Howard and Madrigal (1990) stated that the relative influence of the husband, wife or child is likely to vary according to the type of purchase decision, the stage of the decision-making process; and the overall family characteristics (Kotler, Bowen, Makens, 1999). As shown by Gram (2005) as well as Thornton, Shaw and Williams (1997), differences in needs, wants and desires across family members often transform both the holiday itself and the decision-making process to holidays into an art of compromising, negotiating, attempts to reach consensus, conflict handling, or sometimes crisis management. As a result I think that it is justifiable to say that the change of perceptions of the nature of the tourism decision-making process, and spouses role in it have impacted the opinion on the children s participation within the practice. Lenient upbringing and guilt issues trigger parents to be more responsive to children s holiday preferences. In the tourism decision-making practice tweens are believed to exert active influence in the initial stages of