Travel Lessons From the World of Academia If I've said it once, I've said it thousands of times: "Substantial Amounts of Domain Importance Heterogeneity exist in the contribution of vacations to people's Quality of Life." All right, I've never actually said that. It's a quote from Sara Dolnicar, a professor of tourism marketing at the University of Wollongong in Australia, in her paper "The Contributions of Vacations to Quality of Life," to be published soon in the journal Annals of Tourism Research. A rough translation: Different kinds of people place different levels of importance on vacations - as opposed to other life factors like money, family and spiritual beliefs. This week, I took a whirlwind tour of a world parallel to my own: people who write about travel from an academic standpoint rather than a purely practical, let's-go-do-stuff one. Ever since meeting a group of tourism majors doing a survey in a foreign airport, I've wondered about these professors of tourism and departments of recreation or leisure or marketing, and so decided to see what they had to teach the budget traveler. Here are some lessons learned. Be Realistic and Do Your Homework Professor James Petrick of Texas A&M, who focuses on psychology and marketing and their application to tourism, has studied when tourists return to destinations or hotels they've visited before. Like many in the field, he believes meeting expectations is a key factor. The take-away for travelers: don't idealize the places you're visiting and you'll be much happier in the end. In an interview, Professor Petrick said that one way we can do that is to distinguish between "organic" and "induced" images of a place. In other words, if travelers can discern what a beach destination or a hotel room really looks like (rather than being suckered by a misleading ad campaign or Web site), they will be much happier in the end - a call for us to look carefully for honest photos and unbiased information. So choose what sites you can trust the most; in some cases, that means determining a trustworthy and knowledgeable user base. When looking for food tips, for instance, try Chowhound, a food-centric site, over, say, Yelp. And instead of brochures and Web sites, rely on photos and tips from relatives and friends (and, ahem, trusted, unbiased travel writers) as well as features like the "Photo Fakeouts" series on the hotel booking site Oyster.com, which exposes the differences between marketing images and reality. Determine Your Priorities Professor Petrick's research also shows we're more likely to be unsatisfied if we don't pay careful attention to what is specifically important to us - and to pay more for it, if necessary. If you're a stickler for getting to places on foot and having a solid breakfast, don't just take the cheapest hotel you can find if it's a subway ride away from attractions and offers only stale toast. "Quality is subjective to the individual," he said. Each person has own version of quality. Their expectations are formulated before they travel. I might have very high expectations about the fitness center. I might narrow it down to the key attribute, and that's what I end up looking for. But he also warned that we've gone from trusting friends and relatives for travel advice to trusting total strangers online, when we have no idea who those people are or what their tastes are. That sounds like one vote against a site like TripAdvisor. On the other hand ... Try TripAdvisor Let's have one vote for it. Ulrike Gretzel, another professor from the University of Wollongong in Australia, had a positive approach to the site. "We consistently find that the main motivation is not to vent or take revenge on a business but rather to help other travelers," she wrote in an e-mail. This is good news because it means that most of the review writers have other travelers in mind and try to provide helpful information. She added not to look at the rankings of hotels, but rather the specific comments: her studies have found little correlation between what commenters write and their numerical assessments. Find Your "Delight" Indeed, TripAdvisor is much studied by academics, in part because of its potential as a trove of data. Vincent Magnini, a professor of hospitality marketing at Virginia Tech, recently was co-author of a paper in the Journal of Travel Research titled "Understanding Customer Delight," which used the site to determine where the travelers find the most pleasant surprises when they stay in hotels. Analyzing TripAdvisor reviews, they found that what causes the most delight among travelers is first, customer service, and second, cleanliness. Both are more important than physical facilities or location, for example. The prominence of cleanliness made me consider the possibility that I value it more than I think, and, upon reflection, that seems right - especially when it comes to youth hostel bathrooms. Have Specific Goals The source that I found most interesting was not a study, but a proposed theory of "leisure travel satisfaction" by Joseph Sirgy, also at Virgina Tech, in a paper called "Toward a Quality-of-Life Theory of Leisure Travel" (PDF; requires registration), which received an award from the Travel and Tourism Research Association last year. It proposes applying goal theory - that is, the study of motivation and how people attain objectives - to the travel field. Here are a few highlights. First, goals for travel should be both generally related to abstract life goals - like becoming a better person, not accumulating stamps in a passport - but those abstract goals need to be broken into concrete steps to make them easier to accomplish. That immediately reminded me of my Brazilian friend Tatiana, who recently traveled to her family's ancestral town in Italy, where she was thrilled to find the baptismal certificate of her great-grandfather (he left for Brazil 100 years ago). Similarly, vacations are more effective if you use them to seek "desired states" rather than avoiding "undesired states." In other words, hitting the Caribbean to get away from stress at work is less likely to improve your quality of life than going there to improve your scuba skills and your relationship with your partner. Change Your Environment Professor Sirgy's theory also suggests that vacations are more effective if they provide things you are deprived of in your everyday life. Someone living in a bustling city like New York, for instance, might consider trading a trip to equally bustling London for a relaxing jaunt in the Cotswolds. And for the traveler who is stressed by budget issues at home, this might mean signing up for a (reasonably priced) all-inclusive resort to relieve those daily financial concerns. Be Independent and Share Your Accomplishments And then there's my favorite principle: that "goals chosen freely and autonomously are more intrinsically satisfying than goals set by others." So forget about the group tours that tell you what to do, and pick your own goals - as Tatiana did. In addition, Professor Sirgy's "recognition principle" says, more or less, that you should recognize your accomplishments. Do it publicly if you want - easy in this age of social media. Tatiana told her story on Facebook, and posted a picture of herself in Pradipozzzo with her great-grandfather's birth certificate. It quickly racked up 67 "likes" and 25 thoughtful comments. That's some serious recognition.