The international journal of tourism research tập 12, số 02, 2010 03 + 04

The purpose of the study is to compare the perception of advertising and communication channels between convention and visitor bureaus CVBs and meeting planners in the USA.. By emplo

The purpose of the study is to compare the

perception of advertising and

communication channels between

convention and visitor bureaus (CVBs) and

meeting planners in the USA By employing

245 of CVBs and 226 meeting planners

through an online survey method, the

results of the study reveal clear channel

discrepancies between CVBs and meeting

planners in terms of preference, attitude

and usage of communication and

advertising channels In addition, the study

identifi es different linkages between

advertising channels and advertising effects

in the two different groups Implications for

industry practitioners as well as suggestions

for future study are discussed Copyright ©

2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Received 07 July 2008; Revised 04 February 2009; Accepted 12

May 2009

Keywords: information channel;

organisational behaviour; CVBs; meeting

planners

INTRODUCTION

Meetings and conventions represent

one of the largest elements of the

hos-pitality and tourism industry today

According to a recent market report (Meetings

& Conventions, 2004), the meetings market was estimated to be a $40.8 billion industry in the USA in 2003 As an intermediary between convention attendees and convention sup-pliers, meeting planners have played an im-portant role in the meetings and convention industry by selecting sites, organising meet-ings and coordinating services and events

(Rutherford, 1990; Casanova et al., 2005) As a

layer of destination marketing organisations, convention and visitor bureaus (CVBs) are important information brokers and dissemina-tors in the meetings and convention industry One of CVBs’ critical missions is to promote and brand their destination as a desirable place for meetings and conventions and other related group businesses through travel inter-mediaries such as a travel agency and meeting

planner (Kim et al., 2004; Gartrell, 1994).

In the meetings and convention industry, associations, host locations and attendees are considered the three major players in the meet-ings and convention industry (Oppermann and Chon, 1997) Literature on the issue of site selec-tion is substantial Today, however, most research efforts have focused mainly on each player’s role, characteristics and channel prefer-ences As a result, research about the meetings and convention industry might be fragmented considering the three major parts of the indus-try need to work together and complement one another in a coherent manner to ensure success Studies on meeting planners have mostly exam-ined meeting planners’ perceptions (Bonn and Boyd, 1992; Oppermann, 1996, 1998; Upchurch

et al., 1999; Baloglu and Love, 2001), preference

and satisfaction (Choi and Boger, 2000; Hu and Hiemstra, 1996); Renaghan and Kay, 1987), interactions with hotels (Campbell and Shaw,

Int J Tourism Res 12, 103–115 (2010)

Published online 21 June 2009 in Wiley InterScience

(www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/jtr.737

Organisational Channel Discrepancies

between CVBs and Meeting Planners

in the USA

Dae-Young Kim1,*, Xinran Y Lehto2 and Sheryl F Kline3

1 Hotel & Restaurant Management, University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri, USA

2 Department of Hospitality & Tourism Management, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA

3 College of Hospitality, Retail, & Sport Management, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC, USA

*Correspondence to: Dr Dae-Young Kim, Assistant

Pro-fessor, Hotel & Restaurant Management, University of

Missouri, 219 Eckles Hall, Columbia, MO 65211 USA.

Email: kimdae@missouri.edu

Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd Int J Tourism Res 12, 103–115 (2010)

2000; Rutherford and Umbreit, 1993; Weber,

2001a) and profi ling and comparison among

different types of meeting planners (Bonn et al.,

1994; Goldblatt, 2000; Jones, 2000; Sheehan et al.,

2000) On the other hand, CVB-related studies

are mostly in the areas of profi ling study (Sims,

1990; O’Halloran, 1992; Morrison et al., 1998),

managerial issues (Gartrell, 1992; Getz et al.,

1998), information channel usage (Cheung and

Law, 2002; Feng et al., 2004; Fesenmaier et al.,

1992; Yuan et al., 2003, 2006) and branding and

alliance (Blain et al., 2005; Palmer and Bejou,

1995) However, study on the two main players’

perspectives towards communication and

advertising channels present neglected areas of

research Despite a few studies (Polivka, 1996;

Weber, 2001b) related to the relationship

between CVBs and meeting planners, there is a

substantial need to gain better understanding of

the two groups’ inter-relationship in terms of

their perception and usage of communication

and advertising channel

In organisational channel research, a

substantial amount of literature proved that

communication and advertising channels are

adopted differently depending on the

charac-teristics of an organisation, because each

organ-isation has different organorgan-isational properties

and resources (i.e Dewett and Jones, 2001;

Dejonckheere et al., 2004) That is, the value of

communication and advertising channel is

determined by the organisational resources

and characteristics in order to fully take

advan-tage of the technology Therefore, there is a

need to examine organisational channel

adop-tion patterns based on different organisaadop-tion

types (i.e CVBs and meeting planners),

organi-sational properties and environments Based

on this recognition, the purpose of this study

was to compare the perceptions of advertising

(i.e TV, magazine, Internet, etc.) and

commu-nication (i.e fax, telephone, e-mail, etc.)

chan-nels between CVBs and meeting planners and

to gain a more comprehensive understanding

of the marketing communication dynamics of

the convention industry The specifi c objectives

of this study were to (i) compare perceptions

and usage of channels between CVBs and

meeting planners and (ii) identify and describe

how CVBs and meeting planners are different

in terms of the relationships between

advertis-ing channels and advertisadvertis-ing effects

LITERATURE REVIEW

Organisational communication behaviour

According to Sheth (1996), research on sational behaviour has simply exploded for three reasons since the early 1980s First, the shift to understanding and infl uencing con-sumers to become customers (industrial, insti-tutional and trade) has led to a greater focus

organi-on organisatiorgani-onal behaviour Secorgani-ondly, both the academic journals and business profes-sional organisations have encouraged research and publications on inter-organisation buying behaviour Finally, the marketing discipline is increasingly infl uenced by the disciplines of organisational behaviour, industrial organisa-tions and transaction cost theories in econo-mies Among the various issues in organisational research, it is noted that the most popular area

of research has been the understanding of the information processing and channel adoption (Ward and Webster, 1991; Sheth, 1996; Hult

et al., 2004) There are some important

differ-ences between individual and organisational decision-making (Solomon, 2001; Weiss and Heide, 1993) Some of these differences are summarised as follows:

(1) Organisational decision-making normally involves many people, including those who do the actual purchase, those who directly or indirectly infl uence the deci-sions and those who actually use the product or service

(2) Organisational purchases are often made according to precise, technical specifi ca-tions that require great knowledge about the product or service

(3) Impulsive decision-making is unusual, because decision makers’ thinking modes are more analytical and controlled

(4) Organisational decision-making often involves more of an emphasis on personal selling than on advertising or other forms

of promotion Sometimes, dealing with organisational buyers typically requires more face-to-face communication

Organisational channel choice

In the marketing communication research area, information richness theory has been a major

stream of research surrounding the

develop-ment of a rational channel choice model

for making communication choice decisions

among available communication channels

Based on theoretical and empirical works (Daft

and Macintosh, 1981; Daft and Lengel, 1984,

1986), it is proposed that the choice of

com-munication channel ranges from lean to rich

Moreover, lean channels, such as memos and

other written documents, do not carry as many

communication cues as rich channels, such as

face-to-face conversation, where immediate

feedback and a wide variety of communication

cues are available to both the sender and

receiver of the respective message This theory

further posits that managers will choose rich

media for addressing problems of ambiguity,

while lean media are appropriately selected

to deliver factual information that serves to

reduce uncertainty in managerial decisions

(Daft and Trevino, 1987).

Information richness theory provides basis

for a prescriptive approach in which achieving

a match between information processing

requirements and communication channels

was posited as essential for organisational

effectiveness (Daft and Lengel, 1986)

Gradu-ally, it came to be understood as a descriptive

theory of how employees and managers make

media choices (Daft and Trevino, 1987; Trevino

et al., 1987; Russ et al., 1990) Originally

developed for traditional means of

intra-organisational communication, such as

face-to-face meetings, telephone conversations,

inter-offi ce memos and printed reports,

infor-mation richness theory has been extended to

new communication media, including e-mail

(Trevino et al., 1987) Daft and Lengel (1986)

argued that communication transactions that

can overcome different frames of reference or

clarify ambiguous issues to change issues in a

timely manner are rich, and those that require

a long time to enable understanding or that

cannot overcome different perspectives are

lean Information richness theory suggests that

intra-organisational communication can be

ordered on a continuum from leanest to richest

as follows: (i) numeric documents; (ii)

imper-sonal written documents; (iii) perimper-sonal letters

or memos; (iv) telephone; and (v) face-to-face

meetings Lean communication media,

includ-ing e-mail, memos and letters, might be

appro-priate for routine, analysable tasks such as communicating rules, standard operating pro-cedures, plans and schedules However, lean media lack a personal focus and the ability to transmit non-verbal cues and provide immedi-

ate feedback (Trevino et al., 1987; Rice, 1991).

Channel effects

In terms of the characteristics of media nels, a common distinction made is between broadcast such as TV and radio, and print, such as newspapers and magazines (Assael, 1981; Bendizen, 1993) Broadcast media are considered low-involvement channels, whereas print media are generally regarded as high-involvement channels (Krugman, 1969) Television, in particular, produces low per-sonal involvement because the rate of viewing and understanding is out of the viewer’s control That is, television is not a highly selec-tive medium in terms of audience selectivity

chan-It offers neither the geographic selectivity of newspapers nor the demographic selectivity of the specialised magazines Instead, television

is a non-selective medium reaching a mass audience Creatively, television offers sight, sound, motion and colour So while viewer attentiveness to commercials is likely to be low, television contains an intrusive power to force itself on viewers (Nylen, 1986) In con-trast, print media enable the reader to set the pace and, therefore, provide the opportunity for making connections and dwelling on points

of interest

The result is that print media offers a more comfortable learning environment whereby information can be more easily absorbed and integrated For instance, magazines offer high-quality reproduction and good colour, but most importantly, they are a self-interest medium for readers Moreover, printed mate-rials offer longer life than most media (Nylen, 1986) Thus, print messages are more likely to lead to a change in attitude and behaviour Accordingly, it seems logical to infer that tele-vision is a more effective medium for quick messages, while print media are expected to be more effective in persuading customers when brand alternatives must be carefully compared

TV advertising is designed to maintain liarity with a brand and reinforce positive

fami-Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd Int J Tourism Res 12, 103–115 (2010)

experiences, while the messages delivered by

print media are likely to lead to favourable

behavioural responses Within the context of

hospitality and tourism, it is also clearly

noted that each advertising channel

distinc-tively infl uence different types of audience’s

perception and attitude due to their different

characteristics (Kim et al., 2005).

HYPOTHESES

There has been substantial empirical research

conducted on the impact of different types of

organisations on channel preferences (Capon

et al., 1992, 1996; Lee and Whang, 2001) In

particular, organisational characteristics (i.e

supplier fi rm and customer fi rm) are an

endur-ing quality of organisations, which infl uence

employees’ attitudes and preferences for

com-munication channels (Taguiri and Litwin,

1968) Based on the literature review, this study

hypothesises that:

H1: There are different perceptions of

com-munication channels between CVB marketers

and meeting planners.

H2 There are different usages of main

adver-tising channels between CVB marketers and

meeting planners.

H3 There are different preferences of

adver-tising channels between CVB marketers and

meeting planners.

H4 There are different perceptions of

adver-tising channels between CVB marketers and

meeting planners.

H5 There are different relationships between

preferred channel and advertising effects

between CVB marketers and meeting

planners.

METHODOLOGY

Since the purpose of this study was to compare

CVBs’ and meeting planners’ channel

prefer-ences and usage, the data used for this study

were obtained from two different sources In

the case of CVBs, the sample of CVBs was

drawn from the membership list of Destination

Marketing Association International Only

CVB marketers in charge of promoting their

destinations and conventions (i.e destination marketers, destination promoters, directors of sales, etc.) were selected because of the study focus on the communication channel between CVBs and meeting planners The meeting planner sample was drawn from the member-ship list of Professional Convention Manage-ment Association From this membership list, only meeting planners responsible for pro-moting destinations and communicating with travellers and CVBs were selected Before obtaining the valid sample list based on the sampling criteria, a cross checking between the two lists was performed to ensure mutual exclusiveness in the two groups Moreover, only one meeting planner per organisation was chosen in order to avoid multiple responses from an organisation Applying these sample-screening criteria, a total of 1124 potential meeting planner respondents was obtained.The survey instrument was comprised of 73 questions focusing largely on CVBs’ and meeting planners’ responses on: (i) marketing channel usage and preferences; (ii) general atti-tudes towards each advertising and communi-cation channel; (iii) technology experience; (iv) constructs infl uencing attitudes towards and behavioural intention in the technology adap-tation model; (v) organisations’ resources and technology support; and (vi) demographic information The items for the 10 constructs in the technology adaptation model employed

Venkatesh et al.’s (2003) Unifi ed Theory of

Acceptance and Use of Technology items The total 39 items based on a fi ve-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree; 5 = strongly agree) were modifi ed within the context of hospitality and tourism marketing

The survey was conducted from May 15th to June 10th, 2006 through the e-survey servers

In order to increase the response rate, a alised e-mail showing each individual’s fi rst and last name was sent and four fi nancial prizes ($50 dollar gift cards) were offered as incentives A follow-up personalised reminder e-mail was sent two times on May 24th and June 1st, respectively, to maximise the return rates These efforts resulted in 245 of CVB and

person-226 meeting planners completed responses for 24.01% and 20.1% response rates, respectively Preliminary analyses using chi-square tests were conducted separately for the both groups

to investigate the extent and nature of response

bias In particular, the early respondents (CVBs

= 175; meeting planners = 142) were compared

to the follow-up respondents (CVBs = 70;

meeting planners = 84) in terms of the

demo-graphic, professional and geographic

informa-tion The results of these analyses showed that

only the type of meeting planners was signifi

-cantly different (at p = 0.05).

RESULTS

The demographic profi les of the respondents

are summarised in Table 1 Both sampled

groups appear to be fairly representative of the

convention industry reality For the sample

of CVB marketers, there were slightly more

females (57%) than males, while about 60% of

the respondents were in the age range of 31–50

years One notable characteristic of the

respon-dents was that a majority (84%) of the CVB

respondents were highly educated (bachelor’s

degree or higher) In regard to the profi le of

meeting planners, the most interesting

charac-teristic of the meeting planners was the

major-ity of meeting planners were female (81.7%)

According to Jackson (2003), 20 years ago the

convention and meetings sector was mostly

consisted of men, but as the industry grew out

of administrative departments, women in clerical positions were planning meetings, and now 89.9% of meeting managers and 85.8% of meeting directors are women Another recent market report (Meetings Focus, 2005) also showed that the convention and meetings sector was overwhelmingly comprised of women, as the survey found The two major age groupings of respondents were 31–40 (32.1%) and 41–50 years (31.2%) It was also observed that over 80% of meeting planners have at least a bachelor’s degree

Communication channels include fax, tra-ditional mail, e-mail, Internet messenger, telephone and the Web Parallel questions were asked on specifi c communication channels rather than general communication channels The results showed that there were different perceptions of communication channel useful-ness between the two groups (H1 was sup-ported) (see Table 2) More specifi cally, there were signifi cant differences between the two groups for fi ve out of six communication chan-nels CVBs preferred to use telephone, tradi-tional mail and websites for communicating with meeting planners, whereas meeting plan-ners favoured e-mail and fax communications

Table 1 Demographic characteristics of respondents

Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd Int J Tourism Res 12, 103–115 (2010)

Meeting planners had higher preferences for

new channels (e-mail and the Web) over

traditional ones (traditional mail and fax)

To measure differences in advertising

channel usage, one set of equivalent questions

was given to the two groups In the set of

par-allel questions, CVBs were regarded as senders

of advertisements and meeting planners as

audiences In order to identify main

advertis-ing channels, advertisadvertis-ing budget

apportion-ments were used for CVBs (i.e ‘Which

advertising channel does your organisation

spend the most amount of money for

advertis-ing and promotion?’) The degree of infl uence

of advertising channel was employed for

meeting planners (i.e ‘Overall, which

advertis-ing channel infl uences you the most in regard

to your site selection?’) The results of the

com-parison between the two groups showed

sta-tistical differences based on a chi-square test

One notable fi nding was that about 66% of the meeting planners indicated that personal sales and word of mouth (WOM) was the most infl uential channel CVB websites (14.2%) were the second most infl uential, followed by trade magazines (12.4%) However, the CVB respon-dents indicated that two printed materials; consumer (39.2%) and trade magazines (23.3%), were where they allocated the majority of their advertising budgets

This appears to suggest that there are tising channel discrepancies between CVBs and meeting planners (H2 is supported) (see Table 3) Even with the fact that not all of CVBs’ advertising is focused on meeting planners, meeting planners are still one of their main target markets; about 40% of CVB respondents counted meeting planners as their main target market The results also illustrated that meeting planners are more likely to be infl uenced by

adver-Table 2 Perceived usefulness of communication channels

Measured on a fi ve-point Likert-type scale: not useful (1), somewhat useful (2), useful (3), very useful (4).

CVBs, convention and visitor bureaus; MP, meeting planners.

Table 3 Comparison of primary advertising channels

Advertising channels

Chi-squareFrequency (%)

personal sales, WOM and CVB websites Some

14.2% of the meeting planners rated CVB

web-sites as the most infl uential channel, but only

5.3% of CVBs spent a majority of their

advertis-ing budgets on their websites Some 62.5% of

CVB respondents indicated that their main

advertising channels were either trade or

con-sumer magazines, but only 12.8% of meeting

planners responded that they were infl uenced

the most by these two types of magazine

advertisements

The next phase of channel comparison was

about channel usage and perception of

useful-ness of each advertising channel Except for

trade magazines and CVB websites, all

chan-nels showed statistically signifi cantly

differ-ences for channel usage by chi-square tests (H3

is supported) In terms of perceived

advertis-ing effects, CVB respondents’ perceptions of

virtually all channels were higher than meeting

planners’ scores (H4 was supported) (see Table

4) It can reasonably be assumed that CVBs as

advertisers or advertising sponsors are more

likely to perceive advertising effects in a more

positive way A critical point of the result is

that there is no signifi cant difference for CVB

websites and trade magazines in terms of

general usage Moreover, CVB websites were

the most used communication channel by the

two groups Additionally, both groups

per-ceived CVB Websites to be more useful than

other channels

Correspondence analysis was employed to

examine the underlying relationships between

advertising channels and perceived

advertis-ing effects for both groups This is an

interde-pendence technique suited for simultaneous

analysis of multiple categorical data A set of

objects and attributes can be presented

graphi-cally in a joint space to reveal the relations

among row and column variables, which

cannot easily be exposed by multiple pair-wise

comparisons (Hair et al., 1998; Weller and

Romney, 1990) Correspondence analysis

pro-vides singular values that are statistical

mea-sures describing the number of dimensions

and the proportion of variance explained by

each dimension According to Hair et al (1998),

the values should be greater than 0.20 to be

accepted as a viable dimension This study

shows that two dimensions’ singular values

for both groups were over 0.20 With regard to

the explained proportion of inertia between the nine advertising channels and fi ve adver-tising effects in CVBs, the fi rst two dimensions accounted for 81.0% of the variance, with 44.6%

of the variance (singular value = 0.28) accounted for by the fi rst dimension and 36.4% of the variance (singular value = 0.26) accounted for

by the second dimension

The results of this analysis are visualised in Figure 1 Based on the CVB respondents’ per-spective, consumer magazines had a strong linkage to delivering ‘detailed information’ and generating ‘request information’ Personal sales and WOM and trade magazines appeared

to be more closely related to creating a tive image of destination’ It was notable that the results for the other advertising channels included in the study (i.e Internet, newspa-pers, TV and radio) were not clearly related to any of the various advertising effect measures For the meeting planner group, the two-dimen-sional solution explained 92% of the variance

‘posi-in the data, with the fi rst dimension ing for 67% (singular value = 0.37) and the second dimension accounting for 25% (singu-lar value = 0.23) The correspondence map for meeting planners was somewhat different than for the CVB respondents

account-As shown in Figure 2, personal sales and WOM had strong linkages to ‘request informa-tion’, obtaining ‘detailed information’ and

‘awareness of destinations’ Similar to CVBs, trade magazines were closely related to creat-ing a ‘positive image of destination’

The two correspondence analyses indicated that the relationship between advertising channels and effects varied between the CVB respondents and meeting planners (H5 is sup-ported) There were, however, some common relationships between the two First, trade magazines had a strong linkage to creating a

‘positive image’ of the destination Apart from trade and consumer magazines, and personal sales/WOM, all other channels did not have any strong relationships with advertising effects for both groups

CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONSThe results of this study show that there are clear channel discrepancies between CVB respondents and meeting planners in term of

Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd Int J Tourism Res 12, 103–115 (2010)

Table 4 Comparison of the advertising channel usage and perceived usefulness

Channel advertising effects

Measured on a fi ve-point Likert-type scale: not very useful (1), extremely useful (5).

CVBs, convention and visitor bureaus; WOM, word of mouth.

2.0 1.5

1.0 0.5

0.0 –0.5

–1.0 –2.0

Request info

Positive image Awareness

–1.0 –2.0

Brochures

CVB Web

Portal Web Consumer Magazines

Trade M

1.0 1.5

–1.5

–2.0

Figure 2 Correspondence analysis of advertising channels and effects for meetings planners

preferences and usage of communication and

advertising channels The broad parameters

laid out in this study have important

implica-tions especially for CVB marketing activities

CVBs’ main advertising channels (i.e

maga-zines, brochures and TV) are different from the advertising media that meeting planners mainly receive information from Particularly,

it appears that the most infl uential advertising channel for meeting planners is personal sales

Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd Int J Tourism Res 12, 103–115 (2010)

and WOM This behaviour pattern can be well

understood in the context of information

rich-ness theory (Daft and Lengel, 1986) As a buyer

in charge of group consumption, meeting

plan-ners are more likely to rely on rich media such

as face-to-face or telephone communications

(i.e personal sales/WOM and CVB websites)

This should be a critical fi nding for CVBs who

want to attract meeting planners to their

des-tinations Although not all CVBs’ advertising

channels are aimed at meeting planners,

they are still one of the main target markets;

about 40% of the CVB respondents considered

meeting planners as their main target market

This discrepancy of the usefulness of specifi c

advertising channels may lead to problems

with marketing strategies, advertising budget

allocations and advertising effectiveness CVBs

should consider modifying their marketing

and advertising strategies relative to meeting

planners In fact, it has been an increasingly

common practice for CVBs to provide separate

pages for meeting planners This research

fi nding may lend some insight as to what

con-tents and functions can be effective when

tar-geting meeting planners For example, if CVBs’

websites are where meeting planners seek

richness of information, comprehensive and

detailed information provision with

interac-tive communication possibilities/features can

be one of the key focuses for CVBs when it

comes to content design

This research shows that meeting planners

clearly have positive attitudes towards the

Internet as a communication and marketing

tool in the workplace In that sense, CVBs need

to change their paradigm of Internet

market-ing The results indicated that only 5% of CVBs

spend most of their advertising budgets on

their websites On the other hands, most of the

CVBs are still investing the largest portions of

advertising budgets in magazines (over 60%)

and printing brochures and other collateral

(10%) There may be reasons for not investing

in Internet marketing such as high costs, limited

knowledge and intuitive management

deci-sions based on past experience From a

practi-cal perspective, CVBs have been identifi ed as

pivotal in the coordination and promotion of

local destinations However, the results of this

study seem to question the appropriateness of

CVBs’ current marketing activities for meeting

planners CVBs may be unaware of these channel discrepancies and meeting planners’ preference for the Internet as a communication channel This study points to the need for the CVBs to rethink of their current marketing resource allocations and strategies It could help CVBs to develop better advertising and communication strategies towards meeting planners

In light of the relationships between tising channels and advertising effects, the results of this study provide valuable insights into understanding the nature and impact of hospitality and tourism advertising First, the results indicate that there is a different linkage between advertising channels and advertising effects with regard to the two different groups The fi ndings confi rm the results of previous studies by revealing that the role of advertising

adver-is not limited to stimulating vadver-isits to a tion; rather, it includes exposing the destina-tion to potential visitors, creating a positive image of the destination, and stimulating a preference for the destination that eventually leads to actual destination choices (Bojanic,

destina-1991; Weilbacher, 2003; Kim et al., 2005)

Secondly, there are differences between CVB respondents and meeting planners in terms of their perceptions of advertising channel effec-tiveness CVB respondents perceive consumer magazines as containing ‘detailed information’ and arousing ‘request information’ Personal sales and WOM and trade magazines are more associated with creating a ‘positive image of destination’ In the case of meeting planners, personal sales and WOM have a strong linkage

to ‘request information’, obtaining ‘detailed information’ and ‘awareness of destinations’, whereas trade magazines were closely associ-ated with having a ‘positive image of destina-tion’ Practically, these fi ndings should provide CVBs with pointers for designing more effec-tive advertising strategies, and particularly for better alignment of advertising channels to the aims of their advertising campaign for meeting planners

In all, this study bears theoretical and cal contributions First, this study provides

practi-an overview of orgpracti-anisational theories practi-and thoughts on channel preferences in the hospi-tality and tourism area This research calls for the need for marketers on both sides to allocate

their marketing and advertising budgets more

appropriately by understanding differences in

reciprocal channel preferences Better

knowl-edge of each other’s channel preference and

usage can lead to more effective

communica-tions and marketing strategies This study can

be used as a basis for more extensive

examina-tions of organisational communication

behav-iours, and empirical testing of the complex

relationships that infl uence the extent of

organ-isational channel usages and preferences

Future research can be designed around

devel-oping a greater understanding of an

organisa-tion’s channel usages and preferences, and the

complex phenomenon resulting from the

inter-action among the characteristics of

organisa-tions, organisational resources and technology

adaptation In this sense, more studies are

needed to draw a complete picture of

organi-sational channel behaviour in the context of

tourism and hospitality

This study also has some limitations and the

results should be interpreted with these

limita-tions in mind The study used convenience

sam-pling, and consequently the results of this

research cannot be generalised to represent all

CVBs and meeting planners Second, the design

of one snapshot survey might not accurately

capture the dynamics of organisational channel

preferences In this sense, a longitudinal,

real-time study is recommended to increase internal

validity by enabling the research to track cause

and effect Further, using a self-administered

questionnaire to measure a large quantity of

variables may have led to hidden biases and

response fatigue With these recognitions, more

research should be replicated with a broader

random sample to verify the results

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This study empirically examines the

potential effects of a promotional video on

the image change of China as a travel

destination The analysis is based on an

experimental study conducted among

young, international short-term employees

in the USA Despite positive changes in

almost all the destination attributes as a

result of watching the promotional video,

the structure of the image constructs

remains fairly stable, providing critical

insights on the potential role of publicity

campaigns in affecting destination images

Results of the study reveal that China’s

image consists of mixed and often

contrasting representations, especially the

polarity of modernisation and progress

versus nature and history It was found

that the dominant factor affecting the

respondents’ behavioural intentions was the

cultural and nature tourism dimension

Although other image dimensions exhibit

infl uence as well, fi ndings of this study

suggest that perceived value should be a

strategic focus in promoting China as a

desirable travel destination, in addition to

culture and nature tourism This paper ends

with conclusions and implications for both

research on destination image and

destination marketing in China Copyright

© 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Received 15 March 2009; Revised 20 May 2009; Accepted 21 May 2009

Keywords: destination image; China;

destination marketing; tourism marketing.INTRODUCTION

The growing empirical evidence in

con-temporary destination marketing ture support the fact that destination image plays a crucial role in tourists’ buying behaviour (e.g Pearce, 1982; Sirgy and Su,

litera-2000) As noted by Gallarza et al (2002),

pre-vious studies focused much attention on the meaning and composition of destination image, resulting in a wide variety of defi nitions and models depicting the essence and the construct

of the concept In an often-cited tion, Crompton (1979) argued that a destina-tion image constitutes the beliefs, ideas and impressions a person holds about a certain destination Other defi nitions (e.g Fakeye and Crompton, 1991; MacKay and Fesenmaier, 1997) followed a similar line of thought, with

conceptualisa-a generconceptualisa-al conceptualisa-agreement thconceptualisa-at destinconceptualisa-ation imconceptualisa-age refers to a tourist-based image (i.e one’s subjective impression of a place) rather than a marketer-based image (i.e the promoted image

of the destination) (Li and Vogelsong, 2006) In other words, the image people have in mind regarding a destination might not be akin to the image that is projected by the destination marketers

Most researchers acknowledge the infl uence

of destination image on traveller’s making regarding destination selection (Baloglu and McCleary, 1999; Chen and Tsai, 2007)

decision-Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Int J Tourism Res 12, 116–133 (2010)

Published online 23 June 2009 in Wiley InterScience

(www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/jtr.738

Testing the Impact of a Promotional

Video on Destination Image Change:

Application of China as a Tourism

Destination

Amir Shani1,*, Po-Ju Chen2, Youcheng Wang2 and Nan Hua2

1 Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Eilat Campus, Eilat, Israel

2 Rosen College of Hospitality Management, University of Central Florida, Orlando, Florida, USA

*Correspondence to: Mr A Shani, Lecturer, Ben-Gurion

University of the Negev, Eilat Campus, Hatmarim Blvd

Eilat 88000, Israel.

Email: shaniam@bgu.ac.il

O’Leary and Deegan (2003) mentioned that

images aid travellers to differentiate between

destinations especially when prices are

compa-rable Furthermore, achieving a preferable

image is particularly critical when one wants

to promote a remote or unknown destination

Marketing organisations must transfer the

potential traveller from a stage of unawareness

to a stage of awareness (Yüksel and Akgül,

2007) Although ‘a clear understanding of

travellers’ images is crucial for developing

successful positioning strategies’ (Sönmez and

Sirakaya, 2002, p 185), many factors can

poten-tially infl uence destination image Gartner

(1993) described a wide variety of forces that

act separately or jointly to form a destination

image in the eyes of the potential/actual tourist,

ranging from induced sources (traditional

forms of advertising generated by the

destina-tion or intermediary on its behalf) and

autono-mous sources (e.g independently produced

image agents such as books, movies,

documen-taries, news and social networks in the

Inter-net) to organic sources (e.g information gained

from word of mouth communication and/or

previous travel to the destination)

There is growing evidence that indicates that

autonomous sources enjoy a higher degree of

reliability among potential travellers, and they

are typically more signifi cant than more formal

types of information in forming a destination

image (Kim and Richardson, 2003; Beerli and

Martín, 2004) Therefore, the boundaries

between the induced and autonomous factors

seem to have blurred in recent years, as

mar-keters have implemented various destination

promotion strategies to infl uence what was

typically perceived as autonomous sources

These strategies include establishing media

relations with journalists and media networks

(Lubbers, 2005) or exploiting fi lms and

televi-sion shows for marketing opportunities

(Hudson and Ritchie, 2006) However, as noted

by Dore and Crouch (2003), further research is

required in this important area, as the

evalua-tion of these publicity techniques has not been

suffi cient to understand whether they are

effec-tive or not

Despite the extensive research conducted in

this area, gaps can be identifi ed in the

litera-ture on destination image Various researchers

have pointed out that there have not been

enough empirical studies focusing on change

of destination image (e.g Baloglu and

McCleary, 1999; Govers et al., 2007) Tasci and

Gartner (2007, p 414) stated that image tion is ‘a construction of a mental representa-tion of a destination on the basis of information cues delivered by the image formation agents and selected by a person’ Information on the effectiveness of these image makers is vital for the efforts of destination marketers to increase the awareness of potential visitors regarding the destination, resulting in the likelihood of them visiting the destination in the future (Yüksel and Akgül, 2007) In addition, despite evidence that destination image is vital in the case of lesser-known destinations, most image studies in tourism have focused on Western countries and destinations, while developing and less-developed countries have received much less research attention (Schneider and Sönmez, 1999; Sönmez and Sirakaya, 2002).The current study aims at fi lling these gaps

forma-in the literature by explorforma-ing the change of destination image of China in the eyes of young international short-term employees of a major US company Although China is emerg-ing as one of the leading tourist destinations worldwide, it is still an understudied destina-tion in the tourism literature (Ryan and Gu, 2007) Investigating the destination image of China has also contemporary relevance, as the country has been struggling in recent years to improve its national and tourism images These attempts reached their peak prior to China’s hosting of the Olympic Games in August 2008 with an increasing number of marketing cam-paigns including hiring international media expertise, sponsoring cultural events and pro-ducing promotional videos (Wang, 2003; Xu, 2006) Examining the effects of watching a pro-motional video on the change of destination image of China will shed light on the under-standing of the effectiveness of such publicity campaigns on destination image The promo-tional video of the Beijing Olympics was used

as a tool to achieve the purpose of the study.PROMOTIONAL CAMPAIGNS AND IMAGE CHANGE

The recognition of the economic importance of tourism has led many destinations to establish

Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd Int J Tourism Res 12, 116–133 (2010)

agencies, divisions or organisations with the

main purpose of promoting travel and tourism

to the destination Buhalis (2000, p 112) stated

that ‘promoting destinations essentially implies

the development of communication channels

with clientele and other stakeholders to increase

awareness and persuade them to purchase

products’ Destination marketing

organisa-tions (DMOs) have a wide range of tools to use

in promoting the destination, including mass

media advertisements, participation in tourism

and travel fairs, direct marketing, brochures,

replies to people who request information

about the destination and more

Yet these sources are not necessarily the ones

that have the most infl uence on potential

visi-tors A recent study by Govers et al (2007)

found that autonomous and covert-induced

agents such as television, magazines, Internet,

books and movies, are more popular

informa-tion sources than overt-induced agents such as

advertising This fi nding led the researchers to

suggest that destinations integrate marketing

communication into channels that are usually

perceived as ‘autonomous’

Indeed, many destinations have developed

various media strategies to deal with positive/

negative coverage in the news and to establish

favourable media reporting (Lubbers, 2005;

Avraham and Ketter, 2006) There is growing

evidence of a signifi cant increase in tourists

visiting destinations where popular movies

and television shows were set (Tooke and

Baker, 1996; Riley et al., 1998;) These fi ndings

led Hudson and Ritchie (2006) to recommend

that destinations should exploit fi lm marketing

opportunities In addition, if destinations want

to take advantage of autonomous and

covert-induced agents, the Internet can also be

expected to play an important role for DMOs

in the near future, especially in light of the

increasing popularity of blogging and online

social networks

Whatever technique a DMO chooses to

employ, it is typically operated and fi nanced

through governmental support (e.g many are

funded by collecting bed tax) As a result,

DMOs are increasingly being held accountable

by their stakeholders and elected offi cials for

generating tourism dollars and are required to

provide evidence of adequate returns for the

often costly marketing expenditures

(Scoen-bachler et al., 1995) Therefore, formulating

techniques for measuring the effectiveness of marketing programmes are receiving growing attention from both researchers and destina-tion marketers (Crouch, 1994; Faulkner, 1997;

Butterfi eld et al., 1998).

The goals of measuring marketing grammes are threefold: (i) to assess the perfor-mance of the chosen strategy and justify the investment; (ii) to provide valuable informa-tion regarding what marketing techniques are effective; and (iii) to assist in the decision-making regarding budget allocation and/

pro-or future campaigns (Mitchell, 2005) Yet, evaluating the effectiveness of marketing pro-grammes is a challenging task due to the com-plexity of destination marketing and diffi culty

in accurately tracking tourists’ expenditures For that reason, it is often wise to use various assessment techniques to provide a full picture

of marketing effectiveness

Besides the use of conversion studies as

a popular technique (Kim et al., 2005),

re-searchers propose true or quasi-experimental studies to evaluate the effectiveness of market-ing programmes For example, McWilliams and Crompton (1997) conducted a quasi-experimental fi eld study in eight US cities They did a survey among a cross-sectional sample to fi nd out their attitudes towards visit-ing a certain destination before an advertising campaign and a second survey among another cross-sectional sample was conducted after the advertising campaign By doing this, the researchers were able to estimate the percent-age of people who were infl uenced by the advertisements to visit the destination in the future However, these techniques are often expensive and require a signifi cant amount of time to implement

Other studies have adopted a general

econo-metric perspective Kim et al (2005) stated

that these studies usually attempt to specify

an aggregated model on possible sources for tourist fl ow to the destination (including mar-keting investments), and estimate the marginal number of visits and the economic impacts

of these visits as a result of the marketing programmes Using regression analyses, it is possible to assess whether marketing has a sig-nifi cant effect on tourist arrivals and/or tourist receipts (Kulendran and Divisekera, 2007)

Despite the appeal of this approach, it has

sig-nifi cant limitations, partially owing to the

dif-fi culty of establishing a cause–effect relationship

between marketing and demand (Crouch et al.,

1992) and the fact that it neglects the travellers’

actual decision-making processes (Kim et al.,

2005)

Despite the differences between all the

afore-mentioned techniques of evaluating marketing

effectiveness, their common dominator is the

underlying assumption that the major

objec-tive of marketing campaigns is to generate/

increase tourist arrivals and/or tourist receipts

As noted by Shcoenbachler et al (1995, p 4),

‘this assumption ignores other relevant

adver-tising objectives and effects such as increased

awareness and image and positive attitude

change’ Positive image change towards a

destination as a result of marketing campaign

might result in a visit in the long term that is

not refl ected in studies focusing on short-term

effects Understanding destination image

change as a result of a promotional campaign

is crucial since it provides specifi c implications

for future campaigns regarding image

dimen-sions (either positive or negative) that require

special considerations on behalf of the

destina-tion marketers In addidestina-tion, many destinadestina-tions

also have non-touristic objectives in promoting

their destinations such as improving their

national image as a whole and leveraging their

international status For these reasons,

examin-ing the effects of a promotional campaign or

certain components of it on the destination

image can provide valuable information (in

addition to other indicators) to various

stake-holders concerning its effectiveness

DESTINATION IMAGE OF CHINA

Although China did not open its doors to

inter-national tourism until 1978, it has emerged as

one of the prominent tourist destinations in

the world Yu and Smith (2007) reported that

tourism in the country is growing extensively

in inbound, domestic and outbound markets,

bringing extensive investments to China’s

tourism and hospitality sectors International

tourist arrivals to China have increased from

27.5 million visitors in 1990 to 124 million

visitors in 2006, resulting in over 5.6 million

people employed in the tourism and

hospital-ity industries in 2005 (Gu et al., 2007; Wang,

2008) As of 2006, China was ranked fourth globally in terms of tourist arrivals and fi fth in terms of tourist receipts (WTO, 2007) As a result, the hotel supply in the country has increased 10-fold in the past 12 years (Ryan and Gu, 2007) Beyond the clear economic benefi ts gained from tourism, China sees the tourism industry as a way to signifi cantly heighten its national image, which is still controversial, especially in the Western world (Wang, 2003)

As one part of its attempts to improve its standing, China staged the Beijing Olympics as

a mega-event to present its image as an national co-operator and a harmonious society

inter-by promoting the harmonisation of East–West civilisations (Xu, 2006) Such mega-events in the past have shown not only to have sportive and economical contributions to the host country but also to signifi cantly raise the awareness and knowledge of people regarding

the destination (Lee et al., 2005) According to

a recent survey, 93% of the Chinese population believed that hosting the Olympic Games would improve the country’s international image (Gardner, 2008)

Despite its emergence as a prominent tourist destination, China is still struggling with a problematic national image that might prevent its tourism industry from developing to its full potential Wang (2003) found that despite China’s increasing openness and co-operation with the international community in the past

25 years, the perceptions of China held by people in Western countries are still primarily negative For example, Americans see China

as militant, aggressive and authoritarian The association of China with unpopular notions such as communism and socialism, as well as contention issues such as human rights and the political status of Taiwan, have also claimed to have a crucial infl uence on the coverage of China in the US media (Yan, 1998; Fan, 2006).Similar to many other nations in the globali-sation era, China has been making constant attempts to improve its representations in the international media and to have a positive effect on the public’s opinion towards the country For example, Zhang and Cameron (2003) described and examined the massive public relations campaign launched by the

Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd Int J Tourism Res 12, 116–133 (2010)

Chinese government in the USA at the

begin-ning of the current millennium In addition to

the exposure of Chinese offi cials in the US

media, the campaign also included special

events throughout the USA such as the ‘2000

US Tour of Chinese Culture’, and ‘China

Dis-abled People’s Arts Performing Troupe’ It was

found that the campaign had a certain positive

effect on the coverage of China in some US

newspapers, even though these changes were

only ephemeral

As might be expected, the controversial

international image of China has had an impact

on the image of China as a tourist destination

In an early study, Gartner and Shen (1992)

compared the image of China in the eyes of US

respondents between two points in time: before

and after the Tiananmen Square confl ict in

June 1989 The results showed that the violent

incident resulted in the decline of most of the

touristic images of the country, including their

perception of service-related attributes, and

safety and security issues within the

destina-tion More recently, Xiao and Mair (2006)

investigated articles from 19 international

English newspapers and analysed their

repre-sentations of China as a tourist destination

They called their fi ndings ‘a paradox of images’,

as China was often portrayed with contrasting

images More negative dimensions in the image

of China as refl ected in the media were related

to China’s policies and politics, international

relations, safety/environment/health and, to a

lesser degree, transit/transportation and

busi-ness/economy On the other hand, China was

typically described in positive terms regarding

its culture/history/art, recreation/leisure,

tourist sites and attractions as well as food/

lifestyle

Despite these researchers’ contributions

towards an understanding of the destination

image of China, for the most part, they refl ect

an image portrayed by editors and writers in

selected magazines and do not necessarily

refl ect the image potential tourists have

in mind regarding China Several previous

studies examined the destination image of

special regions of the country such as Hong

Kong (Choi et al., 1999), Macao (McCartney,

2005) and Tibet (Mercille, 2005), yet, they

possess distinct characteristics from mainland

China and cannot be regarded as

representa-tive of the country as a whole In addition, even though China has used various means to generate and sustain a favourable image (Richards, 2001), especially in preparation for the Beijing Olympic Games (Xu, 2006), the degree to which these techniques are effective

is still uncertain and deserves further tion Investigating the effects of promotional and publicity efforts is important, since they are increasingly used by local DMOs as well as

examina-by national tourism organisations (Dore and Crouch, 2003)

METHODOLOGY

Study instrument

A survey instrument was developed to measure the perceived image of China by the partici-pants First, a list of destination image attri-butes was constructed based on an extensive literature review in the areas of destination image Second, several focus group sessions using 47 international travellers were con-ducted to modify the list of destination image attributes in order to fi t the context of the study — China The participants in the ses-sions shared the same characteristics as those who were intended to take part in the main study Each of the focus groups consisted of eight to 10 participants representing countries

in Asia, Europe and the Americas The focus group meetings were conducted in order to generate information related to two issues: destination image attributes in general and destination image attributes of China In order

to reach the second goal, a video, ‘China Forever’, was shown to the participants This procedure was designed to elicit induced des-tination images of China generated from the information cue in the video The participants were asked to add additional attributes of China illustrated in the tourism promotional video On average, the focus group meetings, video viewing and attribute generation took approximately two hours to complete and the results were then integrated into the fi nal version of the study instrument In addition to the generic destination image attributes identi-

fi ed through literature review, the focus group sessions contributed the following specifi c destination image attributes of China: unique

historic and cultural attractions (i.e Great Wall,

Terracotta Warriors, etc.), exotic oriental

atmo-sphere, big and heavily populated, and diverse

and unique ethnic groups and cultures The

fi nal version of the survey included 28

destina-tion image attributes of China

Procedure and measurements

The study was conducted among 217

interna-tional short-term employees of a major US

company in the southeastern region of the

USA All participants were young and

college-educated individuals, temporarily residing

and working in the USA (for practical

train-ing) The study participants’ permanent

residences were in countries in Asia, South

America, Europe and Africa (including the

Middle East countries) All respondents had

travelled internationally during the last fi ve

years Those who have visited China and/or

seen the promotional video prior to the

experi-ment (n = 22) were excluded from the current

analysis, as their image of the destination is

likely to be infl uenced by past experience (see

Hui and Wan, 2003) This allows for a more

accurate assessment of the promotional fi lm’s

effects on the participants’ perceptions

Conse-quently, the fi nal sample was comprised of 195

participants The study took place a few hours

before the offi cial opening ceremony of the

Beijing Olympic Games As part of the

experi-mental design, the participants were asked to

independently complete a survey before and

after watching the promotional video The

par-ticipants were instructed not to share views

and opinions during the experiment, including

the screening of video, in order to prevent any

response bias to emerge

Two sections of the survey were relevant to

the current analysis First, the participants

were asked to indicate on a Likert scale ranging

from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree)

the extent to which they agreed that the 28

attributes were representative of China as a

vacation destination Owing to combined

efforts of relevant literature review and focus

group sessions, the set of destination image

attributes were deemed relevant specifi cally to

the context of China and the Olympic Games

Second, the participants were asked to indicate

their awareness of China as a travel destination

in the future, their current desire to visit China, the likelihood they will visit China in the future and their level of interest in getting more infor-mation about China as a travel destination These scale items were based on the hierarchy

of effects model (Strong, 1925), which are commonly used to measure the impact of advertising

The video

The video chosen in this study is called ‘China Forever’, and was produced by the Beijing Organizing Committee for the XXIX Olympiad Games as part of the public relations campaign The video’s goal is similar to other marketing tools used by tourist organisations to portray destinations as having ‘both unique experi-ences and a wide range of attributes with high utility value such as landscape, climate, geo-graphical location, quality of tourist facilities, friendliness, security, history, indigenous people and shopping’ (Waitt, 1996) The video placed specifi c emphasis on China’s rich history, heritage, natural resources as well as modern tourist amenities (e.g shopping malls)

The video is eight minutes and 19 seconds long and is available on the offi cial website of the Beijing Olympic Organizing Committee (http://en.beijing2008.cn/bocog/) It was also posted by Internet users on various video sharing websites such as YouTube, Google Video and Clipser These sites are usually perceived as independent and neutral, and are typically used to establish social networks between Internet users rather than for com-

mercial purposes (Cheng et al., 2007)

There-fore, a promotional video posted on such a site either by destination marketers or by indepen-dent users might be in the grey area between induced and autonomous information sources, especially when there is no clear indication regarding the origin of the video, which applies

in the case of ‘China Forever’

Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd Int J Tourism Res 12, 116–133 (2010)

(28.2%), France (17.9%) and Britain (15.4%),

followed by Portugal (10.8%), Mexico (6.7%),

Taiwan (6.2%) and Colombia (5.1%) Relating

to their travel experience, the majority of the

participants (69%) travelled three or more

times outside their own countries in the past

fi ve years

Image change

The participants were asked to evaluate each

of the 28 attributes describing China as a travel

destination To examine the impact of the

pro-motional video on the participants’

percep-tions of China, paired sample t tests were

conducted on the attributes as presented before

and after watching the video (see Table 1) Of

the 28 attributes, 25 showed signifi cant

posi-tive changes after the participants watched the

video, all in positive directions The mean (M)

scores of the following attributes showed the

largest increases: ‘refreshing/relaxing

atmo-sphere’ (mean difference (md) = 1.06, p < 0.001),

‘clean environment’ (md = 0.81, p < 0.001),

‘pleasant weather’ (md = 0.64, p < 0.001), ‘open

and welcoming’ (md = 0.63, p < 0.001),

‘advanced tourism industry’ (md = 0.61, p <

0.001), ‘safe’ (md = 0.61, p < 0.001) and ‘exotic

oriental atmosphere’ (md = 0.60, p < 0.001) The

only attributes that did not show statistically

signifi cant changes were ‘big and heavily

populated’, ‘high tech’ and ‘inexpensive

travel’

In addition to the M score comparisons

between pre- and post-tests, the stability of

each item’s score was also examined by

calcu-lating its coeffi cients of variations (CV) CV is

a normalised measure of probability

distribu-tion that is computed by dividing the standard

deviation (SD) with the mean Although CV is

similar to the SD, as it indicates the dispersion

of a variable, it is a more effective

measure-ment of score distribution The reason for this

is that SD must always be interpreted in light

of the data mean, while CV is a dimensionless

fi gure and its interpretation is independent

from the variables’ original measurement unit

Generally, a higher CV value points to a greater

dispersion and, thus, to a lesser stability of the

M score

As can be seen in Table 1, in all image

attri-butes, with the exception of ‘good value for

money’, the CV values decreased in the

post-test, in comparison to the pre-post-test, indicating that the M scores became more stable, with less dispersion among the participants In other words, in addition to the increase in the M scores of most of the image attributes, watch-ing the promotional video also increased the consensus among the participants regarding the extent to which each image item represents China

Although the promotional video had a nifi cant and positive impact on the scores of 89% of the attributes, the respondents ranked the attributes almost identically in pre- and post-tests It is noteworthy that in both pre- and post-tests, the same 10 attributes received the highest scores Both before and after watch-ing the video, the most dominant attributes of China chosen by the participants were ‘unique historic and cultural attractions’, ‘big and heavily populated’, ‘exotic oriental atmo-sphere’, ‘unique natural attractions’, ‘high tech’, ‘variety of unique Chinese events and festivals’, ‘diverse and unique ethnic groups and cultures’, ‘great shopping opportunities’,

sig-‘modern’ and ‘a trip to China is absolutely worth telling’

Similarly, 9 out of the 10 attributes that received the lowest scores in the pre-test also received the lowest scores in the post-test:

‘inexpensive travel’, ‘socially and politically stable’, ‘easy accessibility’, ‘safe’, ‘a major sports power’, ‘clean environment’, ‘conve-nient local transportation’, ‘great nightlife and entertainment’, ‘good value for money’ and

‘pleasant weather’ The only notable change appeared in the ranking of the following attri-butes: ‘refreshing/relaxing atmosphere’ (from

a rank of 21 in the pre-test to 12 in the post-test) and ‘good value for money’ (from a rank of 14

in the pre-test to 20 in the post-test)

Structure of image

To examine the structure of the destination image of China in the eyes of the participants, exploratory factor analyses were utilised on the image attributes in both the pre-test and the post-test data The principal component analysis with Varimax rotation was used to reveal the image dimensions of China and to examine whether any changes occurred as a result of watching the promotional video The

Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd Int J Tourism Res 12, 116–133 (2010)

suitability of the data for factor analysis was

determined by the Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin (KMO)

test that was conducted for the pre-test and the

post-test The KMO for both data exceeded the

minimum required value (0.7) for conducting

factor analysis (pre-test: 0.901; post-test: 0.928)

(see Vogt, 2005) In addition, the Bartlett’s

test of sphericity also indicated that the data

is appropriate for factor analysis (pre-test:

2041.76, p < 0.001; post-test: 2415.84, p < 0.001)

(see Cramer and Howitt, 2004) The number of

factors in each analysis was determined based

on their Eigenvalues (only those with value of

above 1 were included) and the examination of

the screen plot (Tabachnick and Fidell, 2000)

Following the recommendation of Stevens

(2002), items that were highly loaded on more

than one factor and items with factor loading

of less than 0.40 were excluded from the

analyses

The factor analyses for the pre-test and the

post-test data are presented in Tables 2 and 3

respectively As can be seen, four factors

emerged for the pre-test data, explaining

58.36% of the total variance The fi rst factor,

‘infrastructure and superstructure’, consisted

of 10 items such as adequate tourism

infra-structure, suitable accommodations,

conve-nient local transportation, great night life

and entertainment, and easy accessibility The

factor accounted for 36.87% of the variance

with a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.90 The second

factor, ‘hospitability and comfort/security’,

consisted of six items such as

refreshing/relax-ing atmosphere, socially and politically stable,

pleasant weather, and friendly people The

factor accounted for 9.81% of the variance with

a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.79 The third factor,

‘culture and nature tourism’, consisted of fi ve

items such as unique historic and cultural

attractions, unique natural attractions, and

diverse and unique ethnic groups and cultures

The factor accounted for 6.40% of the variance

with a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.79 Finally, the

fourth factor, ‘perceived value’, consisted of

two items only: ‘inexpensive travel’ and ‘good

value for money spent’ The factor accounted

for 5.29% of the variance with a Cronbach’s

alpha of 0.44 Note that while the Cronbach’s

alpha for factors one to three are considered to

be fairly high, factor four has only a moderate

level of reliability, which is typical of factors

comprising of a small number of items (Poria

et al., 2006).

Similarly, four factors emerged from the factor analysis for the post-test data, explain-ing 63.64% of the variance and representing the four themes described earlier Never-theless, in the case of the post-test data, the

‘hospitability and comfort/security’ factor, consisting of seven items, explains the majority

of the variance (45.54%) with a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.88 In addition to the six items that appeared in this factor for the pre-test, the item

‘safe’ was included as well Next, the structure and superstructure’ factor, consisting

‘infra-of eight items, explains 7.15% ‘infra-of the variance with a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.915 The differ-ence between this factor and its pre-test equi-valent was the inclusion of the items ‘various recreational opportunities’, ‘easy accessibility’ and ‘safe’ in the pre-test and the inclusion of the item ‘great shopping opportunities’ in the post-test As in the pre-test factor analysis, the third factor was ‘culture and nature tourism’, consisting of fi ve items and explaining 6.17%

of the variance with a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.80 The difference between this factor and its pre-test equivalent was the inclusion of the item ‘a trip to China is absolutely worth telling’ in the pre-test and the item ‘exotic oriental atmo-sphere’ in the post-test Finally, the fourth factor was ‘perceived value’, consisting of the same two items as its pre-test equivalent and explaining 5.29% of the variance with a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.435

Overall, the factor analyses revealed similar image dimensions for pre-test and post-test data, with only minor differences between the two Note that in both cases the factor receiv-ing the highest average score was ‘culture and nature tourism’ (pre-test: M = 5.12; post-test: M

= 5.67), followed by ‘infrastructure and structure’ (pre-test: M = 4.39; post-test: M = 5.04) and ‘hospitability and comfort/security’ (pre-test: M = 4.00; post-test: M = 4.63) The factor receiving the lowest average score was

super-‘perceived value’ (pre-test: M = 3.99; post-test:

M = 4.16)

Behavioural intentions

Along with the positive changes in the vast majority of the image attributes’ scores that

Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd Int J Tourism Res 12, 116–133 (2010)

occurred after participants watched the video,

positive changes also occurred in the scores

of all four behavioural intention indicators,

though they were not as strong As a result of

watching the video, the participants expressed

higher awareness of China as a travel

destina-tion (md = 0.73, p < 0.001) The video also

changed the participants’ desire to visit China

(md = 0.69, p < 0.001) and the participants were

more likely to visit China in the future (md =

0.56, p < 0.001) A weaker positive change,

though still statistically signifi cant, was

revealed in the last indicator, as participants

indicated they were more interested in getting

information about China as a travel

destina-tion (md = 0.21, p < 0.01) (Table 4)

As noted earlier, destination image is often

perceived as playing a key role in people’s

travel behaviour To examine the relationship

between the image dimensions (independent

variables) and behavioural intentions

regard-ing China as a travel destination (dependent

variables), four multiple regression analyses

were conducted for both pre-test and post-test

data Each of the four behavioural intentions

used in the study (i.e awareness of China as a

travel destination, desire to visit China in the

future, likelihood of visiting China in the future

and level of interest in getting more

informa-tion about China as a travel destinainforma-tion) was

regressed on the image factors explored before

The results of the regression analyses for the

pre-test and the post-test are presented in Tables 5 and 6 respectively

As can be seen, the associations between image dimensions and behavioural intentions indicators were higher in the post-test than in the pre-test The pre-test data revealed that image dimensions would predict 17.5% of the variance in the awareness of China, 26.5% of the variance in the desire to travel to China, 24.1% of the variance in the likelihood of visit-ing China and 20.5% of the variance in the level

of interest in getting more information about China Beta coeffi cients indicated that the

‘culture and nature tourism’ factor was a statistically signifi cant factor in predicting all dependent variables (β = 0.283 for awareness,

β = 0.436 for desire, β = 0.360 for likelihood and

β = 0.295 for information) In the case of level

of interest in getting more information, the

‘hospitability and comfort/security’ factor was also found to be a statistically signifi cant predictor (β = 0.282)

As was noted before, the image dimensions have higher prediction power in the case of the post-test data It appears that image dimen-sions would predict 35.5% of the variance in the awareness of China, 40.3% of the variance

in the desire to travel to China, 39.1% of the variance in the likelihood of visiting China and 41.3% of the variance in the level of interest

in getting more information about China In addition, both pre- and post-test results

Table 4 Paired sample t-tests — pre- and post-behavioural intentions

1 How aware are you of China as a

travel destination in the future?

2 What is your current desire to visit

China as a travel destination in the

future?

3 How likely are you to visit China as

a travel destination in the future?

4 How interested are you in getting

more information about China as a

travel destination?

* Statistically signifi cant at the 5% signifi cance level.

** Statistically signifi cant at the 0.1% signifi cance level.

a Scale ranges from 1 to 7, with 1 = strongly disagree to 7 = strongly agree.

SD, standard deviation; d.f., degrees of freedom.

Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd Int J Tourism Res 12, 116–133 (2010)

suggest that the ‘hospitability and comfort/

security’ factor is a statistically signifi cant

pre-dictor of the level of interest in getting more

information about China as a travel

destina-tion (β = 0.242, p value = 0.004) Moreover,

similar to but signifi cantly stronger than the

pre-test results, beta estimates from post-test

regressions indicate that the ‘culture and nature

tourism’ factor is statistically signifi cant for all

dependent variables (β = 0.392 for awareness,

β = 0.523 for desire, β = 0.465 for likelihood and

β = 0.437 for information), indicating a

strength-ening effect of the video from the paired t tests

Unlike the pre-test data, it was found that the

‘perceived value’ factor is also a statistically

signifi cant predictor of the likelihood of

visit-ing China in the future (β = 0.135)

CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS

The purpose of the current study was to

examine the effects of a promotional video on

the destination image of China among

interna-tional short-term employees of a major US

company in the USA The fi ndings indicated

that the video had signifi cant positive impacts

on China’s image as a travel destination in

almost all the investigated attributes

More-over, the structure of the participants’ overall

perception of China appears fairly stable, as

illustrated by the similar image dimensions

revealed by both pre- and post-test factor

analyses China was perceived by the

partici-pants as an attractive tourist destination with

cultural and ecotourism qualities (e.g nature,

history, education and cultural pluralism)

Most of those surveyed also associated China

with oriental representations of exoticism and

enormity In addition, China’s ongoing

accel-erated modernisation process was also noted

by the participants, who associated China

with modernism, progress and innovation

This mixed representation of opposing aspects

(i.e past versus future) aligns with the

conclu-sion reached by Xiao and Mair (2006), who

depicted China as having ‘a paradox of images’

More generally, the results are similar to those

of previous studies in the sense that

destina-tion image comprises both positive and

nega-tive perceptions (e.g Milman and Pizam, 1995;

Chen and Kerstetter, 1999)

Although the participants had improved opinions of almost all of the attributes employed

as a result of watching the video, both pre- and post-test results suggest that China was per-ceived as a relatively expensive, hard-to-reach travel destination with safety, social and politi-cal issues These images are consistent with the traditional representation of China in the international media (e.g Yan, 1998; Fan, 2006) Moreover, although China had invested heavily in competitive sports for quite a few years (Theodoraki, 2004), the participants did not see China as a major sports power Fur-thermore, the post-test results exhibit signifi -cant improvements in the participants’ desire and likelihood to visit China in the future, indi-cating the overall effectiveness of such a video

on enhancing all of the four aspects of ioural intentions Consequently, promotional videos alike should be positively considered and employed by destination marketers This conclusion is also reinforced by the decreasing

behav-of the CV from pre- to post-test results, ing that the promotional video enhanced con-sensus among the participants regarding the representation of China Because generating desirable consensus of a destination in target markets is critical for DMOs’ success in their marketing campaigns, these fi ndings furnish empirical evidence in support of the capability

indicat-of promotional videos to achieve this goal

In addition to understanding effects of motional videos on destination image change, this study has practical implications for China’s destination marketers Although China has made substantial progress in promoting the country’s image as an attractive tourist desti-nation by showcasing the coexistence of modernism, history and culture, this study identifi es areas that need attention from desti-nation developers and marketers in their tourism marketing efforts These areas include safety, stability, accessibility, environment, weather and fi nancial costs

pro-More specifi c marketing implications can be derived from the multiple regression analyses conducted to investigate the association of the image dimensions with the behavioural inten-tion indicators examined in the study The

‘culture and nature tourism’ dimension was found to be a signifi cant predictor for each of the behavioural intentions in both pre- and

Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd Int J Tourism Res 12, 116–133 (2010)

post-tests, indicating that the ‘cultural and

natural’ attributes remain the main attractors

for tourists to visit China, despite the

acceler-ated modernisation accompanied by the

estab-lishment of Western amenities and tourism

superstructure Moreover, post-test regression

beta estimates associated with the ‘culture and

nature tourism’ dimension were statistically

stronger than the corresponding pre-test beta

estimates This has reinforced the fi ndings of

the paired t test results that the promotional

video signifi cantly enhances perceived

desti-nation image Furthermore, the ‘perceived

value’ factor was found statistically signifi cant

for explaining the ‘likelihood of visiting China

in the future’ only in the post-test results,

implying that ‘perceived value’ can be a

sig-nifi cant driver to increase people’s ‘perceived

likelihood to visit China in the future’ only if

an effective stimulus can be applied to bring it

into play Consequently, ‘perceived value’

should be a strategic focus for more effectively

introducing and promoting China as a

desir-able travel destination, in addition to culture

and nature tourism However, the results also

suggest that emphasising infrastructure and

superstructure or hospitability and comfort/

security is likely to fail to increase the

‘likeli-hood of visiting China in the future’, as

indicated by the corresponding statistically

insignifi cant test results It appears that these

can only be treated as hygiene factors that are

necessary rather than suffi cient conditions to

draw young international tourists to visit

China Core attractors must have to be

identi-fi ed to appeal to this group of tourists Thus,

future marketing campaigns should

empha-sise the cultural and natural facets when

promoting China, rather than highlighting the

contemporary facets of modern China It is

interesting to note that the dimension was also

central after watching the promotional video,

providing further evidence that the video did

not dramatically change the participants’

per-spective regarding China as a travel

destina-tion; rather, it strengthened their previous

perceptions

In addition, the ‘hospitability and comfort/

security’ dimension was signifi cantly related

to the level of interest in getting more

informa-tion about China as a travel destinainforma-tion both in

pre- and post-tests, illustrating the importance

of being perceived as hospitable, comfortable and secure in travel It should be noted that despite the importance of this dimension, it received lower average score than the ‘infra-structure and superstructure’ dimension, which was not found to be a signifi cant predic-tor of the respondents’ behavioural intentions This fi nding points to the need to reduce the concerns that many hold regarding the politi-cal and social atmosphere in the country as well as to the need to promote hospitable behaviour in behalf of the Chinese population Note that this dimension contains attributes not directly controlled or impacted by tourism marketers and practitioners (e.g socially and politically stable, friendly people, clean envi-ronment) Consequently, improvements in this regard require collaborations and understand-ing of stakeholders from other sectors as well

as from decision makers at the national level.Finally, the ‘perceived value’ dimension of the destination image of China was found to

be a signifi cant predictor of the participants’ likelihood of visiting China in the future in the post-test data Since the study focused on the younger international travellers’ perspective, this fi nding poses a challenge to China’s desti-nation marketers in attracting young travellers

to the country Directing information on special deals and reasonably priced options for youth travellers on websites, forums and blogs speci-

fi ed to the young market might aid in lessening certain concerns about the affordability of travelling in China

LIMITATIONS AND FUTURE RESEARCHThe study clearly has shortcomings that need

to be addressed First, there is a need for future research using more representative samples that include other age groups, as the present study focused solely on a youth perspective Second, the researchers adopted an experi-mental study design, which is naturally char-acterised by different conditions than watching the promotional video on television or on one’s personal computer Other various informa-tion agents and contextual features that are prevalent in real life situations might moderate the impact of promotional videos on the viewers’ perceptions of the videos to a certain extent However, although these random and

idiosyncratic effects may produce noise to the

fi ndings of this study, the quasi-experiment

design employed here should be able to capture

the main effect Yet, the results of the study

should be interpreted with caution, as in

different circumstances consumers might be

affected by other relevant information sources

that can alter their interpretation of the video

(e.g watching the video during or after

favour-able/unfavourable media converge of current

affairs in China) Investigating the effects of

such videos in a more natural setting (e.g

through Internet surveys in the participants’

home environment) can be a critical step to

validate the study’s results and shed more

light on the promotional video’s impact on

destination image Third, it is important to

note that the study examined behavioural

intentions as opposed to actual behaviour

There is no guarantee that an increase in the M

score of the behavioural intentions will

neces-sarily translate actual visits to China in the

future In addition, the fi ndings of Zhang and

Cameron (2003) with regards to the

temporari-ness of a constructed destination image as a

result of a marketing campaign also point to

the need to investigate image over time, rather

than merely at one point in time Thus, future

studies should focus efforts on attempting to

examine the long-term effects of marketing

tools used by destination marketers

Finally, despite the importance of promoting

the desired destination image to an

interna-tional audience, it should be noted that such

efforts are not a substitute for dealing with true

political and socio-economic challenges that a

destination might face As noted by Fan (2006,

p 13), ‘Nation branding will not solve a

coun-try’s problem but only serves as the fi nal touch,

to add icing on the cake If economic

develop-ment in a country is like completing a gigantic

jigsaw, nation branding is probably the last

piece’ As a result, investigating and

under-standing the impact of political and

socio-economic development on destination image

is also a worthwhile endeavour

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In this paper, we examine the expenditure

of whale shark tour participants at Ningaloo

Marine Park, Western Australia; the location

of the world’s fi rst whale shark tourism

industry, established in 1989 We

demonstrate that in 2006, participants’

expenditure in the region was $894 per trip,

total expenditure was $6.0 million (all

fi gures are in Australian dollars), and

between $2.4 and $4.6 million would have

been lost to the region if whale shark

tourism did not exist Our measure of

participants’ expenditure is substantially

lower than the calculation of $2370 per

participant from a previous study of whale

shark tourists using data collected in 1995

We argue that this is consistent with a

change in the types of wildlife tourists that

participate in an activity as the industry

reaches the point of consolidation Our

results also suggest that using old data to

forecast wildlife tourists’ expenditure needs

to take into account the industry’s stage of

development Copyright © 2009 John Wiley

Whale shark tourism is an important

drawcard for the Ningaloo Coast on the mid-northwest of Western Aus-tralia.1 In addition to attracting local and inter-national visitors and making a contribution to the regional economy, it also fi ts within the

category of ‘iconic’ tourism (Stoeckl et al., 2005),

providing the region with a recognisable brand and point of difference from its competitors Previous research on whale shark tourism valued the expenditure of whale shark tourists

in the region at $4.7 million (Davis et al., 1997).2

However, the Davis et al study was conducted

in 1995, only six years after the fi rst whale shark tours, when the industry was in its infancy

In this paper, we discuss and assess changes

to whale shark tourism since 1995, focusing on the local economic impact of whale shark tour-ists’ expenditure This paper consists of fi ve sections The fi rst section provides a brief description and history of tourism of the Nin-galoo Coast and the Ningaloo whale shark tourism industry The second section reviews the literature, analysing the economic impact

Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Int J Tourism Res 12, 134–148 (2010)

Published online 21 July 2009 in Wiley InterScience

(www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/jtr.742

Consolidation in a Wildlife Tourism

Industry: The Changing Impact of Whale Shark Tourist Expenditure in the

Ningaloo Coast Region

James Catlin1,*, Tod Jones2, Brad Norman3 and David Wood2

1 Faculty of Media, Society and Culture, Division of Humanities, Curtin University of Technology, Perth, Western Australia, Australia

2 Curtin Sustainable Tourism Centre, Curtin University of Technology, Perth, Western Australia, Australia

3 Centre for Fish and Fisheries Research, Division of Science and Engineering, Murdoch University, South

St, Murdoch, Western Australia, Australia

*Correspondence to: J Catlin, Division of Humanities,

Curtin University of Technology, GPO Box U1987, Perth,

Western Australia 6845, Australia.

Email: james.catlin@gmail.com

1 The term ‘Ningaloo Coast’ refers to the coast that runs from the town of Exmouth to the town of Coral Bay in the Coral Coast tourism region.

2 All fi gures are in Australian dollars.

of tourist expenditure The third section

describes the methodology, focusing on the

survey questionnaire, its administration and

treatment of the data The fourth section

pres-ents the survey results and compares the results

with the earlier Davis et al study The fi nal two

sections discuss the implications of the results

They draw conclusions regarding changes in

the whale shark tourism industry and the

effects of industry consolidation in a wildlife

tourism industry on tourist expenditure and

characteristics

BACKGROUND

Tourism on the Ningaloo Coast

In 2003, visitor direct expenditure in the

Nin-galoo Coast was valued at $138 million (Carlsen

and Wood, 2004), indicating that tourism

brings more revenue to the region than its

second largest industry, fi shing.3 The Ningaloo

Coast (Figure 1) consists of the shires of

Exmouth and Carnarvon, plus the

surround-ing Marine Park Accordsurround-ing to Tourism

Research Australia (TRA), total visitation to

the Shire of Exmouth and the Shire of

Car-navon in 2005, calculated as an average of the

previous four years, was 102,175 and 152,300,

respectively.4 Following consultation with

local stakeholders and visitors, Carlsen and

Wood (2004) reduced the total of these two

fi gures by 20% to avoid double counting and

overestimation Following this method, the

total number of visitors to the Ningaloo Coast

for 2005 was calculated to be 203 580.5 Although

reliable statistics are not available for the early

1990s, it is widely regarded by researchers and

the local tourism industry that visitor numbers

have increased markedly since the early 1990s

Over this period, there has been a marked

change in the nature of tourism in the region

From 1989 to 1991, fi shing was the most

popular activity on the Ningaloo Coast for 70%

of visitors (Wood and Dowling, 2002), while

in 2003, it was most popular for only 10% of

visitors (Carlsen and Wood, 2004) In a related trend, the origin of visitors has changed from being overwhelmingly from Western Australia

to now include a high proportion from other countries and more from other states (see Table 1)

Carlsen and Woods’ (2004) analysis of diture patterns on the Ningaloo Coast found that the expenditure of visitors correlated posi-tively with their participation in high-cost activities, and correlated negatively with their age Visitor expenditure also correlated posi-tively with increasingly expensive accommo-dation categories,6 and that expenditure correlated with origin (international visitors spent more than interstate visitors, who spent more than locals) Accommodation has been, and continues to be, dominated by caravan parks and camp grounds There are six caravan

expen-Figure 1 Map of the North West Cape (modifi ed from CALM 2005a)

3 The latest statistics from 1999–2000 values local fi shing

at $73 million including multipliers (WAPC, 2004).

4 Using a four-year rolling average reduces the chances of

Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd Int J Tourism Res 12, 134–148 (2010)

parks in the region compared with six hotels/

motels, three holiday units/apartments and

six backpackers (two of which are located in

caravan parks) However, hotel developers are

showing an increasing interest in the region A

Novotel was recently built in Exmouth and

there were plans to build a Hilton in Coral Bay,

a small resort town located close to the south

of Ningaloo Coast (Figure 1), although Hilton

has recently withdrawn from this agreement

Occupancy rates are not available for all

accom-modation types due to the small number of

providers and concerns about commercial

sen-sitivity Figures are available for caravan parks,

which had an occupancy rate of below 25% in

February 2006, which increased to over 80% in

July and August 2006 (ABS, 2006) Figures for

the Coral Coast tourism region (which includes

the Ningaloo Coast) indicate that hotels, motels

and serviced apartments have their lowest

occupancy rates in February and their highest

in July and September (the months that include

school holidays) (ABS, 2006)

The whale shark tourism industry on the

Ningaloo Coast

There are only a handful of places around the

world where whale sharks appear consistently

and in suffi cient numbers upon which to base

a tourism industry Together with the

recog-nised and developed industry operating at

Ningaloo Marine Park (NMP), opportunities

to swim with whale sharks also occur at about

20 international destinations including

Mozambi-que, the Maldives, Seychelles, Baja California,

Costa Rica, the Philippines, Belize and

Dji-bouti Whale shark tours have been operating

out of Exmouth since 1989, but it was not until

their popularity grew and the need for

regula-tion became apparent that licences were fi rst

issued to operators in 1993, thus establishing

a regulated tour industry (Colman, 1997) Originally, 13 licences were granted This has since increased to 15, with 12 at Exmouth and

three at Coral Bay (Wilson et al., 2005)

Cur-rently, the number of licences is set at 15 and are leased to operators over a period of several years

Interest in whale shark tours has grown since its inception, with the number of paying passen-gers rising to over 5000 visitors in 2003 during the offi cial Western Australian Department of Environment and Conservation (DEC) whale shark season of April and May (CALM, 2005b; Figure 2) However, whale shark tours have been known to run at any time from March to August, and total visitor numbers are therefore likely to

be considerably greater and, in some seasons, are possibly double those collected offi cially The timing of the whale shark season complements the peak tourist season, which runs from June to October Furthermore, the effect of whale sharks

on the tourism industry in Exmouth extends beyond the whale shark season because they assist in attracting tourists throughout the year (Wood and Glasson, 2006)

LITERATURE REVIEWWhile economic analysis of tourism is increas-ingly important to tourism planning and policy development (Tyrrell and Johnston, 2006), measuring the economic impacts of nature-based tourism has proven particularly useful for increasing the recognition of the economic value of wildlife and national parks and for helping to ensure adequate management (Eagles, 2002; Wood and Glasson, 2006) This usefulness underlies the recent growth in assessments of the expenditure of visitors to National Parks in Australia (Carlsen, 1997; Driml, 1998; Economics and Regulatory Reform

Table 1 Place of origin for tourists in the Ningaloo Coast

Unit, 1999, 2000; Ward, 1999; Pearson et al.,

2000; Carlsen and Wood, 2004; Stoeckl et al.,

2006; Wood et al., 2006) and other countries

(Fesenmaier et al., 1989; Xue et al., 2000; Nayak,

2001; Eagles, 2002; Lee and Han, 2002; Saayman

and Saayman, 2006) For instance, Stoeckl et al

(2005) found that visitors who interacted with

dolphins in Monkey Mia, Western Australia,

contributed between $4.2 million and $8.8

million per annum in direct expenditure to the

local economy, while visitors who participated

in whale watching in Hervey Bay, Queensland,

contributed between $6.5 million and $11.5

million per annum While the wide range of

expenditure here is large, the level of

expendi-ture is sizeable for small regional economies

even at the lower end of the scale In another

study, Tisdell and Wilson (2002) found that

turtle viewing at Bundaberg, Queensland,

contributes $0.8 million annually in tourist

expenditure to the local economy

There are two broad groups of economic

indicators that can be used to assess the

eco-nomic value of nature-based tourism (Driml,

1998) The fi rst group involves measuring the

economic benefi ts or total benefi ts of tourism

and then subtracting any costs to society in the

provision of those benefi ts A problem with

this approach for whale shark tourism that

takes place in a remote regional location is the

data-poor environment and the concomitant

diffi culties of accessing data from local nesses The second group involves calculating the direct expenditure associated with tourism and recreation and using a multiplier to calcu-late the net economic benefi t of tourism to the region Mihalic (2002) argues for the centrality

busi-of expenditure to the understanding busi-of the nomic consequences of tourism She writes that

eco-‘the consumption of tourism is at the economic centre of the economic measurement of tourism and the foundation of the economic impacts of tourism’ (Mihalic, 2002, p 88) Similarly, Pearce (1981, p 240) argues that establishing a fi gure for direct expenditure provides the ‘fi rst indication of the signifi cance of tourism to a national, regional or local economy’ Within this second approach, direct expenditure can

be calculated through the use of a survey or through the application of expenditure models (Frechtling, 2006) Given the data-poor environment, it was decided to use a survey to gather information directly from participants.This study uses the following formula to calculate visitor expenditure:

Total visitor expenditure = Average daily visitor

expenditure × average length of stay × total number of participants

Visitors were asked to record the number of people and the total expenditure for their travel

0 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000 6000

Year

Figure 2 Whale shark tour participant numbers for the offi cial season of April and May (Note: Offi cial

statistics from the 1995 season are not available)

Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd Int J Tourism Res 12, 134–148 (2010)

group According to Stynes and White (2006),

this is easier for participants than recording

individual expenditure We have decided to use

the number of paying visitors because many of

the non-paying participants are repeating an

earlier unsuccessful tour (free of charge) and

other non-paying participants were researchers

who undertook multiple trips

Johnson and Moore (1993) argue that

pro-viding fi gures for the total expenditure of

tour-ists who visit a particular resource overestimates

the economic impact of that resource Instead,

it is necessary to know the expenditures that

are specifi cally due to that resource — the

expenditure that would be lost if that resource

was not there Such a measurement can be

made through a scenario question addressing

whether participating in a whale shark tour

was the reason for a trip or destination choice,

or increased the length of time spent in the

region Recent economic studies of wildlife

tourism participants have measured the

expen-diture ‘attributable’ to the resource, generally

through asking such a question (Carlsen, 1997;

Carlsen and Wood, 2004; Stoeckl et al., 2005)

However, to date, there has been a lack of

attention to terminology in such studies A

sce-nario question measures what we label the

‘substitution’ value, or the amount of money

that would have been spent outside the region

(‘substituted’ with a trip elsewhere or staying

at home) if a particular activity or resource

were not available

A number of studies use input–output (IO)

multipliers to calculate the indirect and induced

effects of visitor expenditure on the economy

(Driml, 1998; Economics and Regulatory

Reform Unit, 1999, 2000; Saayman and

Saayman, 2006) Recently, there have been a

number of criticisms of the use of IO

multipli-ers, particularly because they do not capture

the feedback effects of tourism growth within

an economy (Carlsen and Wood, 2004; Dwyer

et al., 2004) Dwyer et al (2004) argue that IO

multipliers measure the positive effects of

tourism growth on economic activity but

ignore the fact that this growth reduces the

resources available to other industries within

the economy, which can, in some cases,

out-weigh the positive effects (Dwyer et al., 2004;

see also Sahli and Nowak, 2005) They

advo-cate the use of computable general equilibrium

methods (CGE), which model the interactions between different sectors of the economy However, both IO multipliers and CGE methods require economic data sets that are not available for the Ningaloo Coast region Regional locations are generally heavily reliant

on imports and consequently have very small multipliers due to this high level of leakage

(Stoeckl et al., 2005, 2006) Rather than using

estimates to generate IO tables (a pre-condition

of CGE analysis), a number of studies have chosen to limit their analyses to direct visitor expenditure in the region, citing the absence of

IO tables and their small value in regional

loca-tions (Carlsen and Wood, 2004; Stoeckl et al.,

2005, 2006) Given these considerations, this study does not employ multipliers, and our expenditure fi gures should therefore be seen

as a conservative indicator of the value of the whale shark tourism industry to the regional economy

METHODOLOGYCalculating visitor expenditure in a region is conceptually simple, but it entails many diffi -culties in collecting and treating data that can potentially skew results (Frechtling, 2006) The

fi rst challenge is to ensure that the survey sample refl ects the characteristics of the popu-lation (in this case, whale shark tour partici-pants) The demographic parameters of the entire whale shark tourist population were not available for comparison with this study because such data are not collected However, representativeness of the sample can be con-

fi rmed by comparison with another dent study of whale shark participants Results from Catlin’s (2005) whale shark tourism study found very similar demographic characteris-tics to the participants of this study in the categories of age, gender and nationality This suggests that the sample for this study is representative and that it is legitimate to generalise to the broader population of whale shark participants on the Ningaloo Coast

indepen-The Ningaloo Coast regional boundary tures most important aspects of the impact from visitor expenditure, in particular, accom-modation costs, because the area is isolated and a whale shark tour is a day-long activity

cap-that departs around 0730 hours Only 2.8% of

respondents listed their accommodation

loca-tion as ‘other’, meaning not in Exmouth, Coral

Bay or the National Park but most likely still

within the region The surveys were

distrib-uted to the participants who departed from

Exmouth Tours that departed from Coral Bay

were not surveyed However, the majority of

operators (and therefore the majority of

par-ticipants) depart from Exmouth, as indicated

by the location of licences, as previously

dis-cussed, and the mixture of accommodation is

similar for both locations Furthermore,

expen-diture patterns are likely to be similar for the

two locations

Questionnaire design and administration

The questionnaire used in the survey was

based on that used by Wood since 1997 in the

Ningaloo Coast region (Wood, 2000) The

survey was developed further by Carlsen and

Wood in conjunction with the Sustainable

Tourism Cooperative Research Centre (Carlsen

and Wood, 2004) Through a process of refi

ne-ment, the questionnaire has been reduced to

two pages that capture the signifi cant elements

of visitor expenditure and visitor

characteris-tics Accommodation and activity costs,

accommodation type, visitor origin, household

income and age are particularly important

(Wood et al., 2006) The expenditure categories,

much like those suggested by Stynes and White

(2006), cover accommodation, food and drink,

transportation, other costs (including

souve-nirs and retail), equipment costs, and activities

costs Telescoping, the inclusion of

expendi-ture incurred outside the region, was further

reduced by asking participants to provide

fi gures for purchases both inside and outside

of the region

The questionnaires were administered in

both English and Japanese languages to

whale shark tour participants from April to

June 2006 as part of a broader Earthwatch

Institute-supported project participating in the

conservation group Ecocean’s photograph

identifi cation programme of whale sharks

Two different methods of administering the

survey were employed First, questionnaires

were distributed directly to the whale shark

participants at Tantabiddi boat ramp to the

north of the Ningaloo Coast This method has already been proven successful in achieving a high response rate by Catlin (2005) Although

an exact response rate was not calculated for this survey, the questionnaire was received very well by the whale shark participants and

a high return was attained (estimated to be

>90%) This method accounted for close to one-third of all completed questionnaires.The other mode of distribution was to give bundles of the questionnaires to the whale shark tour operators The survey forms could then be passed on to the participants by the operators This method allowed for a large number of questionnaires to be distributed Davis and Tisdell (1998), in their previous study of whale shark tourists, acknowledged that this approach may have introduced bias

as a result of variations in participation levels among operators To overcome this potential bias, regular contact was maintained with operators to encourage participation In addi-tion, it was assumed that the inclusion of a whale shark educational brochure and a sticker promoting whale shark photo identifi cation would persuade tour operators to hand out the survey forms From both methods of distribu-tion, 804 questionnaires were completed and returned Analysis of the results showed very little variations between the two methods of survey administration

Data treatment

Before beginning analysis, it was necessary to address a series of potential measurement errors and to formulate strategies for dealing with contaminants and outliers Five potential measurement errors relating to visitor expen-diture were addressed in preparing the data for analysis

(1) All of the activities’ costs were reviewed against the cost of a whale shark tour ($300–350) and, where the entries were not consistent with the cost of the tour for that number of participants, they were reviewed

or excluded, or when appropriate, the number of participants was excluded or corrected For instance, one participant entered $300 for activity expenditure for a group of two people Since the cost of a

Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd Int J Tourism Res 12, 134–148 (2010)

whale shark tour is over $300 per person,

either the expenditure or the number of

people in the expenditure group is likely to

be incorrect and the expenditure results

were excluded

(2) Following Stynes and White (2006), we

reviewed all of the expenditure categories

and entered in a ‘zero’ for blank categories

where the respondents’ entries indicate

this may be the case This generally

occurred in the transportation expense

category For instance, it is possible that a

participant on a package tour paid for

their transportation outside the region, or

that participants who drove themselves

bought their petrol elsewhere Where this

was possible and the travel expenditure

was blank, we entered ‘zero’

(3) The high cost of travelling to the region by

either road or air could have potentially

infl ated the travel costs in the region if the

question was misinterpreted However,

care was taken to remove any individual

travel costs that were unreasonably high

For instance, one respondent entered

$10 000 as the travel expenditure for a trip

lasting three days This is likely to be the

cost of fl ying to Australia, which does not

itself contribute to the regional economy

Travel expenditure was excluded when

this was likely to have occurred

(4) The most likely contaminant to our data

was participation by residents For this

reason, participants who reported to have

stayed for extended periods in rental

accommodation were excluded from the

study as they were deemed to be

residents

(5) Participants who stayed over four weeks

were excluded as outliers (n = 14); these

constituted only 1.7% of the total

respon-dents Participants who stayed for extended

periods skew the length of stay fi gure and

are not representative of the total sample

Twenty-eight surveys were excluded using

this methodology Given the often skewed

distribution of expenditure data, it is

recom-mended that the mean expenditure is

calcu-lated using either a trimmed mean or a weighted

mean (Pol et al., 2006) However, Stynes and

White (2006) recommend the use of a trimmed

mean (and by extension a weighted mean) only

in instances where it is impossible to vet the entries or where the size of the data set pre-cluded this option Given the principles applied

to verify the data and the attention to outliers, this study uses the mean of each expenditure category to calculate expenditure

RESULTS

Demographics

The number of participants was and still is provided by a head count undertaken by the Western Australian DEC as part of their regu-lation of the whale shark industry Previously, this head count only covered the offi cial two-month whale shark season from March until May even though whale shark tours can run for a period almost double the length of the offi cial season The fi rst complete annual head-count that we employ here was undertaken in

2006 and the total number of paying pants was 6677

partici-Table 2 shows the demographic and trip characteristics of the whale shark tour partici-pants As can be seen, females (55.8%) slightly outnumbered males This gender composi-tion is consistent with studies on the Great Barrier Reef, where snorkelling was also the main activity (Birtles, Valentine, Arnold, and Dunstan 2002; Green, 1997) Whale shark tour-ists came from a variety of locations through-out the world Of the international participants, the main sources were the United Kingdom and Ireland (33.8% of international visitors), Germany (16.5%), the rest of Europe (20.1%) and Japan (13.1%) Australian visitors made up nearly half the population, close to half again coming from Western Australia Over half the participants were aged between 18 and 30 years (51.1%), and the mean age was 34.4 years The age distribution of whale shark tour par-ticipants is akin to similar activities (Green, 1997; Musa, 2003)

The long distances required to travel to the North West Cape, compounded by the rela-tively high cost of swimming with whale sharks, have the potential to restrict the experi-ence to people with higher incomes It would therefore be expected that a large proportion

of people would have higher incomes, as was

As mentioned earlier, Ningaloo is one tion in an exclusive group of sites where the opportunity to view whale sharks is readily available Thus, it is interesting that only 37.0% came specifi cally because whale shark tours were available in the region On the other hand, 60.2% would have still visited the area regardless of whether the whale shark tours were available However, close to two-thirds (65.9%) of this group would have spent less time if the whale sharks were not present This suggests that the other attractions of the region are also an important component of people’s decisions to visit the area.

loca-Participant expenditure

The per person total and nightly expenditure

in the Ningaloo region are presented in Table

3 The per night expenditure category was based on the average number of nights in the region: 4.8 Despite removal of outliers from the data set, the median total expenditure was noticeably lower than the mean for all catego-ries This is, however, typical of visitor expen-diture data and is due to the large range of individual expenditure Notwithstanding this, the mean is still the appropriate fi gure for measuring average expenditure (Stynes and White, 2006)

Not surprisingly, the greatest proportion of participants’ expenditure in the region was on activities; throughout the whale shark season, tours are consistently offered for between $300 and $400 In addition, tourists may also pay for other activities in the region, such as scuba diving and nature-based tours The relatively low average nightly expenditure on accommo-dation ($38) can be explained by the majority of respondents residing in campsites, caravan parks and backpackers (Table 2) During the whale shark season, there was generally a wide range of accommodation available (for instance, caravan park occupancy is under 50%), although visitors who stayed in the region at the end of

a long whale shark season that overlaps with the July school holidays would fi nd their accom-modation options limited and would struggle

to fi nd accommodation without a booking.The total and nightly expenditures were further categorised according to the effect of whale sharks on participants’ travel plans in the

Table 2 Demographic and trip characteristics of

whale shark participants

the case in the results shown in Table 2 As can

be noticed, most visitors stayed for a week or

less, with camping and caravan park as the

most used type of accommodation by a small

margin over hotels/motels, followed by

backpackers