Modeling Tourism Advertising Effectiveness

This study builds on previous research on the impact of tourism advertising and argues that there are a number of likely routes through which tourism advertising influences destination choice. Data were obtained from a survey that examined the impact of Illinois travel advertising and was conducted during the fall of 2001. The results confirm that there are strong linkages among top-of-mind awareness, ad awareness, requesting travel information, and the likelihood of visiting a destination, and therefore, these constitute important routes to influencing destination choice. Differences in the effects of advertising by media channel also appear to be substantial. The tourism industry in the United States has grown to generate approximately $560 billion (in 2001), including international and domestic travel expenditures, generating 7.2 million jobs and $93 billion in tax revenue (Travel Industry Association of America 2004). Competition for these expenditures among state tourism offices has increased substantially throughout the years. According to the Travel Industry Association of America (TIA; 2001), the total budget of state tourism offices in the United States reached $685.1 million (an average of $13.7 million per state) in 2001. Of this amount, $178.2 million was spent for domestic advertising and $49.7 million for international advertising (TIA 2001). Concomitant with this growth in investments in tourism, many state tourism offices face the need to evaluate the efficacy of these programs. In advertising effectiveness research, a considerable amount of attention has been given to the measurement of advertising effectiveness and media channel choice (Batra, Myers, and Aaker 1995; McWilliams and Crompton 1997; Woodside 1990). In tourism research, evaluating the effectiveness of travel destination advertisements has focused largely on the extent to which a promotional campaign " stimulates " visits to a particular destination. A variety of approaches have been taken, including advertising tracking studies, conversion studies, and other forms of program eval-approach has generally focused on evaluating individuals' responses to advertising campaigns within the context of destination awareness, visitation, and visitor expenditure. Advertising evaluation research indicates, however, that the effectiveness of an advertisement is not limited to simply the purchase of a product but rather is extended to a range of psychological and cognitive aspects related to awareness and intention that may play an important role in the purchase decision in a longer time frame (Bendixen 1993; Siegel and Ziff-Levine 1990). Thus, conversion studies often have been criticized because they neglect to reflect the underlying behavioral processes of …