Visitor attraction management: A critical review of research 2009–2014

Research publications focussing on visitor attractions have increased in recent years, with articles sourced from an increasingly broad range of disciplines and fields of study. Key findings include a reduced reliance on case study and qualitative research, towards a significant increase in the use of quantitative methods to investigate and analyse the data gathered in relation to management issues experienced at sites. There is clear evidence of the use of visitor attractions to develop destinations, via engagement with local communities and engagement with new and existing visitors. Contemporary issues facing visitor attraction managers and researchers, specifically the increasing diversity of visitors and responses to the increasing commercial imperative, are observed. A key contribution is the wealth of research outputs considered, alongside the development of a future research agenda that highlights the need for researchers to combine academic and practitioner needs to support the sector with relevant and accessible research.     

Progress in visitor attraction research: Towards more effective management

Visitor attractions (VAs) play a crucial role in the success of a tourism destination, where they act as key motivators for visits and as resources for local communities. The range of stakeholders involved means their effective management is of key importance in the destination and in the overall success of a country's tourism product, yet they are an under-researched sector of the tourism system. This Progress in Tourism Management paper reviews and reflects on research publications in relation to this sector. It sets the wider research context and identifies the key management issues experienced at VAs. The paper identifies the limitations of current work in this field and establishes how factors such as ownership and visitor volume help to explain the complexities encountered in managing VAs. The paper then covers a set of themes to structure discussion of previous research activity and offers a model of factors involved in the effective management of VAs. The paper concludes with the development of a research agenda for VA researchers.     

Competitive importance-performance analysis of an Australian wildlife park

Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA) and the related analysis of performance minus importance gaps have proved valuable and popular techniques for the management of tourism destinations as well as products and services more generally. Their simplicity makes them easily interpretable to management. Unfortunately their application is hindered by measurement bias and doubt over the appropriate placement of crosshairs to determine whether performance and importance is high or low. This paper introduces Competitive Importance-Performance Analysis (CIPA) to resolve these issues by applying the scientific principle of a control. CIPA uses benchmarking against competitors to determine cross-hair placement, reduce measurement bias and determine market position. A survey of an Australian wildlife park is used to illustrate how CIPA provides additional insights for management while results from IPA or gap analysis are potentially misleading. CIPA is applicable not only to tourism but also to other areas of management or marketing of a product or service.     

Spatial and temporal modelling of tourist movements using Semi-Markov processes

Tourist movement is a complex process. It can be modelled from a number of different perspectives; for example, Tourism, Geography, Economics, Mathematics, Computer Sciences and Psychology. This paper aims to establish a sound methodology, using Semi-Markov processes to model the spatial and temporal movement of tourists. The objective is to understand, predict, control for, and optimise the decisions made by tourists in their choice of attractions. Semi-Markov processes have a Markov chain and a renewal process embedded within their structure, and as such, can be used to provide a wide variety of practical models. One of the outcomes of this approach is the introduction of a measure to assess the attractiveness of particular tourist attractions based on spatial and temporal interactions between the attractions. A case study conducted at Phillip Island Nature Park, Victoria, Australia is used to validate the model. The study’s results support the proposed model’s efficiency. The results are also practical and useful for assisting park managers and tourist operators with park planning and marketing decisions: for example, knowing which attractions are the most popular, how long tourists will spend at any one site; and what the likely routes are that they will follow.     

Exploring visitor movement patterns in natural recreational areas

GPS technology is widely used to produce detailed data on the movement of people. Analysing massive amounts of GPS data, however, can be cumbersome. We present a novel approach to processing such data to aid interpretation and understanding of the aggregated movement of visitors in natural recreational areas. It involves the combined analysis of two kinds of movement patterns: ‘Movement Suspension Patterns’ (MSPs) and ‘Generalized Sequential Patterns’ (GSPs). MSPs denote the suspension of movement when walkers stop at a place, and are used to discover places of interest to visitors. GSPs represent the generalized sequence in which the places are visited, regardless of the trajectory followed, and are used to uncover commonalities in the way that people visit the area. Both patterns were analysed in a geographical context to characterise the aggregated flow of people and provide insights into visitors’ preferences and their interactions with the environment. We demonstrate the application of the approach in the Dwingelderveld National Park (The Netherlands).     

How smart is your tourist attraction?: Measuring tourist preferences of smart tourism attractions via a FCEM-AHP and IPA approach

Although smart tourism has gained increasing attention, empirical investigations of smart tourist attraction (STA) from a tourist perspective are still limited. The purpose of this study is to explore a methodological approach of assessing tourist preference of STA, and the strengths and weaknesses of an STA accordingly. First, factor analysis was used to determine tourists' key evaluation items of STA. Next, fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method and analytic hierarchy process were applied to the STA evaluation of Hongshan Zoo, a popular tourist attraction in China. Then, importance-performance analysis was conducted to diagnose the strengths and weaknesses of Hongshan Zoo's STA construction. Findings suggest that “smart information system”, “intelligent tourism management”, “smart sightseeing”, “e-commerce system”, “smart safety”, “intelligent traffic”, “smart forecasting” and “virtual tourist attractions” are tourists' key evaluation factors of STA. This paper extends previous research on smart tourism, and offers insights into the theoretical investigation and practical development of STA.     

Tourists' Images of a Destination-An Alternative Analysis

Tourism research has traditionally tackled the question of destination choice by asking visitors to rank attributes identified by the analyst and to indicate the degree to which they measure up to prior expectations. The current presentation offers an alternative qualitative methodology to the gauging of satisfaction, motivation and experience by focusing on tourists and examining the linguistic content of their mental images. The case study is that of Barbados and winter visitors to that Caribbean island. In supplying details of their own projected images and responses to pictorial stimuli in both pre and on-trip situations, they provide a framework for analysis at three levels. While cognitive appraisal of the destination is explored by means of mental comparison, the affective dimension reveals a vocabulary of motive. Finally, there is a cognitive component of imagery in which tourists project themselves into an imagined scenario as if they had already experienced it. These various layers of subjective meaning may be collectively understood as analogous to the discourse of advertising.     

Modeling hotel room price with geographically weighted regression

Insufficient attention has been given to hotel-room-price attributions and its mechanism in the lodging research field till now. This article examines how site and situation factors differently affect lodging industry and room prices. Comparative analysis of four hedonic price models has been conducted to investigate how these attributions influence room price of Beijing's hotels above star three. Spatial autocorrelation in hotel prices and in hedonic room price equation residuals were analyzed in this research too. Some conclusions can be found and summarized: according to the estimated results, for specific locales, the results expressed in a global model might be inaccurate. The fitting coefficient of geographically weighted regression demonstrates the importance of going beyond the global modeling framework when incorporating geographically weighted regression into hedonic price model. At last, an innovative method for determining the influence of a hotel's attributes at market rates on its’ values, or implicit prices was put forward by the authors.     

Tourists’ digital footprint: The spatial patterns of tourist flows in Qingdao,China

Spatial patterns of tourist flows represent the movement of tourists and show differences in tourism resources giving advice for promoting balanced and sustainable tourism development. This paper proposes a novel framework for analyzing these patterns based on tourists' digital footprint data collected from online travel diaries. Based on illustrative case study data from Qingdao (China), the framework, combining traditional quantitative and social network analysis, is able to pinpoint: (1) The influence of distance decay and attractions’ popularity on the spatial patterns of tourist flows; (2) The uneven distribution of the core tourist nodes and the existence of the structural hole phenomenon, which form a network pattern with unbalanced power and intense internal competition; (3) The formation of the core area for tourism along the coastline – as is typical for coastal tourism cities. This difference of tourism resources between coastal and inland areas, thus, remains a challenge for future tourism development in Qingdao.     

Factors Affecting Tourist Satisfaction with Theatrical Performances: A Case Study of The Romance of the Song Dynasty in Hangzhou,China

This study, for the first time, attempts to explore the factors affecting tourist satisfaction with a theatrical performance, The Romance of the Song Dynasty in Hangzhou, China. Four factors are identified to have affected tourist satisfaction: “Performance,” “Venue Environment,” “Service,” and “Stage Facilities.” These theatrical performance factors are examined to assess the relative influence on tourist overall satisfaction. Tourists have the highest satisfaction with “Stage Facilities” among all factors; however, “Service” is the most influential predictor of tourist overall satisfaction. Tourist demographic and travel characteristics toward these four theatrical performance factors reveal several significant differences. Discussions and implications are provided to theater operators to improve tourist satisfaction with theatrical performance not only in Hangzhou, but also in the whole of China.     

中国资源型景区与城市空间关系研究

本文以资源型景区为研究对象,在前人研究的基础上对其概念进行了界定与分类。然后,本文选取国家旅游局评定的4A级景区中的资源型景区为景区样本,市区非农业人口在50万以上的大中城市为城市样本,利用地理数学方法的空间分析手段和GIS空间分析工具,定量分析资源型景区与城市的空间分布关系。结果表明,绝大多数资源型景区分布于距市中心300公里以内,并且集中分布于距市中心50公里以内的市区和距市中心50—100公里的市郊地带;并且规模越大的城市,其周边分布的资源型景区越多。