Senior and non-senior traveller behaviour: some exploratory evidence from the holiday rental sector in Switzerland.

An important number of studies have been made concerning life course variation in travel
and leisure behaviour, often from the point of view of the travel life cycle. Whilst many facets
of travel and leisure have been discussed, there is a quasi total lack of literature on the particular
sector of holiday rentals, despite the importance of that sector. Given the demographic
ageing currently taking place in many European countries, it becomes important not just to
further pursue research on age as it relates to travel behaviour, but also to extend the analysis
to other areas of tourism than those most frequently studied. In this paper we formulate a
number of hypotheses concerning the willingness to pay for holiday rentals and travel preferences,
which we subsequently test, using a survey of Swiss households. We find evidence to
support our hypotheses and find significant differences between both non-seniors and seniors,
as well as between younger and older seniors.