The effect of destination type and travel period on the behavior of the price of airline tickets.

The effects of customer characteristics, differentiating between tourist and business travelers, and the date of travel are considered important elements in airline price behavior. In the literature, the difference between tourist and business travel is based on consumer characteristics; however, the main contribution of this paper is to examine this difference with respect to the characteristics of the destination. Thus, in this paper, we consider the top- and bottom-ranked tourist destination cities (to differentiate between most-and least-visited tourist destinations) and two travel periods (a holiday period and an off-peak period) in order to analyze the effect of the destination and travel period on airline price behavior. The results show that the price level is highest during the holiday period to the lowest-ranked tourist destinations, and that the price dispersion is highest during the holiday period but to the top-ranked tourist destinations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]