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

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Next StepsThis project has surfaced a good deal of information about the types of attractions that aresuccessful in attracting visitors to North American cities. However, by design, it hasfocused solely on the number of additional leisure visitors that could be enticed with anew attraction in Toronto or Ottawa. Notably, it has not considered visitor spend orlength of stay. Nor has it shed light on the behaviour of local residents to the addition ofnew attractions. It has ignored individuals visiting friends and relatives and businesstravellers who indulge in non-business activities during their stay. Consequently, there isa range of potential follow-on analysis that could be considered as the Ministryformulates future plans to bring more visitors to Ontario. Some of the possible extensionsto this project include:• Addressing behavioural differences among visitor segments such as businesstravellers, travellers visiting friends and relatives, and the interaction ofconvention and business travellers with non-business attractions.• Separating the tourist visitations data to look at the preferences of visitors fromdifferent origins (Europe, North America, Latin America or Asia).• Examining visitor spending patters and how this affects overall tourist revenue.• Studying the length of visits and the impact on the tourist visitations.• Examining the actual experience of cities that have added the attraction types thatmight be considered by Toronto and Ottawa.3
II.IntroductionTourism is a vital element of Ontario’s highly diversified and dynamic economy. Thetourism sector accounts for roughly 4.5% of Ontario's GDP and employment. However,recent external shocks have thrown this sector into a sharp decline. The lingering impactof 9/11, the recent U.S. recession, appreciation of the Canadian dollar, militaryintervention in Iraq, and SARS have all contributed to a sharp fall in visitors to Ontario’smajor metropolitan centres in 2003. Global Insight estimates that both visitor arrivals toOntario and total visitor spending in Ontario declined by 10% in 2003 1 .Fortunately, Ontario’s major urban centres offer a remarkably broad range of featuresthat will help offset these negative shocks and rebuilt tourism to the region.Unfortunately, the significance of any particular feature or combination of features ontravel demand is not well understood. Consequently, tourism promotion strategies anddecisions related to the development of the attraction portfolio in Ontario are made withonly a partial understanding of the impact these decisions may have on prospectivevisitors.The Ontario Ministry of Tourism and Recreation (the Ministry) in partnership with theCanadian Tourism Commission, Canadian Heritage, and Parks Canada commissionedGlobal Insight to develop an econometric model to quantify the relative importance of therange of attractions that influence tourists’ decisions to visit a particular destinationwithin North America. This model will be used to better understand the attractiveness ofToronto and Ottawa as visitor destinations relative to competing North Americandestinations and to facilitate the decision-making process of the Ministry as it developsguidelines to encourage visitors to come to Ontario.In particular, the econometric model or models will help to:• Assess gaps in the product offering of particular tourism centres;• Quantify the potential returns from proposed product development;• Identify synergies between particular mixes of features; and• Establish objective criteria for product development priorities.III.Study ObjectiveThe main objective of this study was to estimate the impact of building additionalattractions on increasing tourist visitations to the selected North American cities. Thisstudy did not consider visitor spend or length of stay. The objective was achieved by:• Establishing a database of the attractions offered to tourists visiting the selectedNorth American cities and the number of leisure visitors to each city.• Utilizing this database to build a series of cross-sectional econometric models toexamine the deviation among leisure visitation among these cities. The estimated1 Global Insight estimates that in 2004, visitor arrivals to Ontario will see a significant growth of 13%,while the total visitor spending in Ontario will experience a modest growth of 5%.4
Page 2 and 3: Table of ContentsI. EXECUTIVE SUMMA
Page 4 and 5: I. Executive SummaryHighlightsThe r
Page 8 and 9: IV.coefficients from these models p
Page 10 and 11: series, simple autoregressive and
Page 12 and 13: Arts & Culture Museums Historymuseu
Page 14 and 15: The tourist visitations data was al
Page 16 and 17: Hotel Room Count and Hotel Property
Page 18 and 19: Table 9: Michelin’s RatingsRating
Page 20 and 21: value below one suggests that the s
Page 22 and 23: Table 13: Individual Attractions Th
Page 24 and 25: Table 16: Significant Results 14Equ
Page 26 and 27: The adjusted R 2 for this model is
Page 28 and 29: • On average across all cities, b
Page 30 and 31: Model 5C 17 : In Model 5C, the numb
Page 32 and 33: The model overpredicts the number o
Page 34 and 35: Attraction Elasticities for Ottawa
Page 36 and 37: Table 22: Marketing Budget Elastici
Page 38 and 39: VII.Technical AppendixA. Attraction
Page 40 and 41: • Metropolitan Opera House in New
Page 42 and 43: Model 3: Three-Star Quality-Rated A
Page 44 and 45: Model 5B: Three-Star Quality-Rated
Page 46 and 47: 3. The cognitive perspective involv
Page 48 and 49: also found that almost half of the
Page 50 and 51: Also, the model seems to completely
Page 52 and 53: strengths and its weaknesses, devel
Page 54 and 55: Items from QuestionnaireTable 23: M
Page 56 and 57:
Tourism Demand/Econometric Modellin
Page 58 and 59:
Table 25: Types of Explanatory Vari
Page 60 and 61:
Results: Lim and McAleer found that
Page 62 and 63:
Richards, Greg. (2002). “Tourism
Page 64 and 65:
Figure 4: Overseas Visitors to U.S.
Page 66 and 67:
Figure 6: Cities Person-Trips Volum
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