A sample of female Australian tourists' travel health intentions and behaviour while holidaying in south east Asia

Over 456,000 Australians spend time holidaying in South East Asia each\ud year; it is Australia's top tourist destination. Much of the attraction of South\ud East Asia is the novelty of exotic tropical environments. However, these can\ud result in strange and diverse health hazards.\ud This exploratory research used sequential in-depth interviews to explain\ud the relationship between the travel health advice tourists receive and their\ud behaviour while holidaying in South East Asia. When providing travel\ud health advice to tourists travel health advisers need to understand the\ud psychology underlying reasoned behaviours such as travel health behaviours\ud if they want to persuade tourists to practice preventative health measures.\ud After review of the relevant literature it would appear that this is the first\ud time that the theory of reasoned action, developed by Ajzen and Fishbein in\ud 1980, had been used to explore travel health beliefs, attitudes, intentions and\ud behaviours.\ud The research found that the travel health advice received by tourists had marginal effect on their travel health behaviours as the source, extent and\ud relevance of the advice was left wanting. The tourists hoped to relax and\ud desired a good time on their holiday by entering into the 'holiday spirit'\ud offered by South East Asia. This impeded their ability to recognise the very\ud real travel health risks they faced