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

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