Factors Influencing Visitor's Choices of Urban Destinations in North ...

C. Literature ReviewTourism Attractiveness LiteratureTourism Attractiveness Literature focuses on a discussion of the range of factors thatinfluence the attractiveness of a destination. More formally, Leiper (1990) develops theidea of a tourist attraction system, comprised of “…3 elements: a tourist or humanelement, a nucleus or central element, and a marker or informative element. A touristattraction comes into existence when all 3 elements are connected.”“Culture as a Determinant of the Attractiveness of a Tourism Region”Ritchie and Zins (1978) examined factors that influence the overall attractiveness of atourism region and measured the relative contribution of different social and culturalelements to the attractiveness of a tourism region.A survey of 201 informed individuals representing a wide range of tourism and culturaldevelopment sectors was conducted in the province of Quebec. The results of this studysuggest that general factors such as natural beauty and climate were the most importantdeterminants of the attractiveness in the region followed in order by cultural and socialcharacteristics, attitudes towards tourists, accessibility of the region, infrastructure of theregion, price levels, sport/recreational facilities, and shopping/commercial facilities.One of the significant drawbacks 20 of this study is related to sample bias. The individualswho participated in this survey represented a particular group of tourism professionalsrather than users of culture-tourism facilities.“A Framework of Tourist Attraction Research”Lew (1987) summarizes a range of approaches from previous research to categorize theattractions. In particular, Lew identified three approaches to the topic and called theseapproaches the ideographic perspective, the organizational perspective, and the cognitiveperspective.1. The ideographic perspective refers to the general attributes of a place, includingnatural beauty, climate, culture, social customs, etc. The ideographic perspective does notprovide an assessment of quality of a particular attraction, quality of management, touristmotivation, and preference for different attraction. Moreover, there is no discussion ofspatial relationship between different locations.2. The organizational perspective does not necessarily examine the attractionsthemselves, bur rather focuses on spatial elements (i.e. in relation to other attractions),capacity to accommodate large number of tourists and provide with services (i.e. lodging,food, merchandise), and the temporal nature of attractions (a year-round flow of touristsvs. seasonal flow). Scale is used to categorize the spatial relationship of an attraction toother attractions. The bottom line of this approach is to provide insight into theorganization of tourist attractions.20 Pointed out by Zins (1978).42