Exploring Chinese tourists’ preference to attributes of cruise itinerary products: A choice experiment approach

China has emerged as one of the fastest-growing and dynamic sectors of the cruise tourism industry in the past 10 years; however, attractive itineraries for each user class remain limited. In general, China's cruise market offers only a small number of cruises and similar types of cruise itinerary products. As such, additional options are urgently needed to meet the growing demand. In this paper, we use a choice experiment (CE) approach to investigate Chinese tourists' preferences for exploring cruise itinerary attributes via a marginal willingness to pay (MWTP). To identify the relevant aspects of the itinerary at cruisers' own valuation, the existing literatures, products on sale, and expert interviews were used as key guidelines. Adopting the orthogonal design allowed for the creation of a subset of the possible choice to investigate tourists' preferences. Finally, the study obtained 935 responses from Chinese tourists for conducting logit analysis and generating the best cruise itineraries profile. Findings indicated that duration and final destination were the most influential attributes of cruise passengers, followed by the ship size, cabin, price, and travel time. This research is expected to give cruise operators useful suggestions about itinerary design to meet the growing consumer demand.