Is vacation destination a positional good?

The number of vacation flights is increasing, and since flying is a highly polluting mode of transport, it is important to better understand how people choose their vacation destination. This paper examines whether vacation destination is a positional good, as suggested by van Wee (2021). This means that their valuation of a destination depends on where their peers travel to. This is investigated in a context-dependent choice experiment, in which respondents chose between vacation trips that varied in destination, travel cost, and travel time, given that their friends travelled to a higher, lower or equally valued destination. The results show that for almost three-quarters of the respondents, positionality plays a role. More specifically, it was found that the importance of the vacation destination decreases when friends travel to a less attractive place and, conversely, increases when they travel to a more attractive one. An important implication of this finding is that the welfare loss from policies aimed at curbing the growth of air travel may be smaller than currently assumed. After all, others are also affected by the same policies, meaning they too may no longer be able to visit the most attractive destinations, thereby diminishing the relative value of those destinations.