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

strengths and its weaknesses, develops an appropriate marketing strategy and implementsit successfully may be more competitive than one which has never examined the role thattourism is expected to play in its economic and social development 27 ”. An extension tothe Ritchie and Crouch model is also discussed in this section.“Scanning Museum Visitors: Urban Tourism Marketing”Jansen-Verbeke and Van Rekom (1996) evaluate the role that the Rotterdam “museumpark” (a set of museums including a museum for modern architecture, a museum ofnatural history, a local art museum, a gallery for contemporary art exhibitions, and a finearts museum) could play in attracting visits to Rotterdam. Rotterdam is known as aworking city, and has a low profile as a tourist destination (Much of historical Rotterdamwas destroyed in the Second World War).Background: According to Smith (1994), a museum is often regarded as an intermediaryin the process of creating a final tourism product, offering a valuable set of experiencesfor cultural tourists. Many tourism-marketing plans emphasize museums as a corecharacteristic in the urban attraction and a critical element in generating a “high-quality”urban environment. The purpose of this paper was to investigate whether the Museum ofFine Arts could benefit from the promotion of other local museums. A two-step surveywas used to identify the motives behind the decision to visit a museum and to assess theirrelative importance.Results: 53.5% of survey participants indicated that their primary purpose in coming toRotterdam was to visit the fine arts museum. 23.1% of the respondents mentioned theintention to visit more than one museum, although only 16% of respondents actuallyvisited more than one.Most museum visitors were not fully aware of the range of museums included in themuseum park, even though a majority visited with the primary intention to visit amuseum. This suggests that Rotterdam promotion authorities had not yet successfullyincorporated the idea of the museum park in their marketing strategies, and that furthersynergies could be realized from emphasizing the museum cluster in future marketingmaterials designed to reach museum-going tourists, and by focusing on the motivationsthat visitors reported as encouraging their travel to Rotterdam’s museums.“The Destination Product and its Impact on Traveller Perceptions”Murphy et al. (2000) examine the influence of environmental and social factors on thetourism’s experience, and compare the tourism experience to retail experience. Theprimary objective of this paper is to examine the relationship between perceived qualityand value of a trip and tourist intention to return. The model was applied to Victoria,consistently rated as one of the premier world destinations by the readers of Conde’ Nastemagazine. The exit survey sample conducted by Tourism Victoria included people livingin British Columbia and surrounding states of Alberta, Washington and Oregon.Model: Hypotheses were tested to assess the drivers of tourists’ intention to return toVictoria within two years.27 Dwyer and Kim (2001).49