Chapter 7: “Why Not Study What Tourists Actually Do, Instead of Asking Them What They Think They Do?” A Call for More Experiments in Tourism and Hospitality Research

This chapter aims to encourage tourism researchers to widen their scope of method when studying tourist behavior. It does so by debating tracking mobility and planning exercises as meaningful complements in researchers’ method repertoire. Both methods have been found to reflect tourist behavior in a more accurate way than do, for example, surveys and interviews, which rather mirror what tourists say they do, instead of reflecting what they actually do. This chapter presents studies in which tracking mobility and planning exercises have been used, and elaborates on their importance for theory building in future tourism research. Findings show that both methods score high in ecological validity. The chapter gives concrete assistance for future research studies that would like to include methods like these in their examination of tourist behavior. The contribution of this chapter lies in its recommendations to using varied methods, and in its support in the theoretical understanding of tourism.