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

A. Literature ReviewIntroductionGlobal Insight conducted a literature review in order to complement Global Insight'sunderstanding of past efforts to evaluate the attractiveness characteristics of individualcities. The literature review focuses on identifying key articles in the tourism literatureand describing the main findings from these articles. Many of the articles Global Insightreviewed were survey articles that summarized the range of current and past researchreported. In this way, Global Insight reviewed key elements of the extensive set ofliterature published on tourism attraction over the past decades. Information gleaned fromthis review influenced the structure of our empirical modelling work in that portion of theproject. Global Insight's research included articles from the following four categories oftourism-related research:• Tourism Attractiveness Literature;• Destination Competitiveness Literature;• Urban Tourism Marketing Literature;• Tourism Demand/Econometric Modelling Literature.Tourism Attractiveness Literature focuses on a discussion of factors that influence theattractiveness of the destination such as culture, infrastructure, price levels, and attitudestowards tourists. More recently, some articles define “tourist attraction systems” thatconsider how these factors influence tourists through marketing and promotion of thesite.Destination Competitiveness Literature describes key foundations for developing acomprehensive tourism model. Not only the core resources and attractors of thedestination are important, but also elements such as destination management, destinationpolicy, and contributing macro and microenvironment factors. “Competitiveness in thetourism sector is defined as the ability of the tourism market environment and conditions,tourism resources, tourism human resources, and tourism infrastructure in a country tocreate an added value and increase national wealth. That is to say, the competitiveness inthe tourism sector is not only a measure of potential ability, but also an evaluation ofpresent ability and tourism performance.” 2Urban Tourism Marketing Literature examines the marketing strategies undertaken byurban authorities and tourism marketers. “A destination that has a tourism vision, sharesthis vision among all stakeholders, understands both its strengths and its weaknesses,develops an appropriate marketing strategy, and implements it successfully may be morecompetitive than one which has never examined the role that tourism is expected to play3in its economic and social development.”Tourism Demand/Econometric Modelling Literature uses econometric techniques andmodels to forecast tourism demand. Econometric techniques range from statistical time2 Kim (2000).3 Dwyer and Kim (2001).6