Inadequate return questions: return when? Sometime?

Purpose – This paper has two main aims: to show responses like yes or very likely for inbound visitors returning to a destination can lead to misleading and unreliable information; and to clarify the kind of information that should be collected. Design/methodology/approach – Responses from Taiwan's inbound visitors relating to returning are examined to see what can be learned. Modeling is used to extract meaningful quantitative information from data. Findings – Modeling shows that survey responses about return are inconsistent. Although 95 percent of non‐visiting‐friends‐and‐relations (VFR) leisure visitors indicate returning, this is not consistent with a retention rate of 90 percent. A retention rate of 33 percent is consistent with the observation that 70 percent of person‐visits are first‐visits. However, 33 percent retention is not consistent with over 95 percent of visitors returning. Conventional questions are yielding highly unreliable information and, therefore, data collection should be changed. Originality/value – Relations between vague questions and return trips have been established. This research provides new evidence of the need for return data to include information allowing estimation of volume and timing of return.