The Effects of Advertising Awareness and Media Form on Travel Intentions

Abstract

Travel intentions are directly tied to destination awareness, and potential visitors' perceptions of a destination and their personal circumstances. Marketing campaigns are often used to increase the purchase intentions of a relevant target market by creating awareness, changing perceptions, or reinforcing previously held views. Tracking intentions to visit is an important measure of the effectiveness of a destination's marketing strategy. This article reports on one such study for Prince Edward Island (PEI), a major Canadian tourist destination. The results are based on 103,402 responses, over two years, to a web-based travel intentions survey. The results indicate that intentions to visit PEI are highly related to how potential travelers learn about the official PEI visitor website and the ability to recall specific forms of advertising seen or heard. Visitor recall of PEI, measured through exposure to one or more types of advertising, has a pronounced impact on the intention to visit.

KEYWORDS:

• Travel intentions
• advertising
• official visitor website
• web survey
• destination awareness

The authors thank the Atlantic Canada Tourism Partnership for providing data used in this study. We are also grateful for the many insights and helpful suggestions provided by Dave Bryanton of the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, two anonymous reviewers, and guest editors Antonia Correia and Metin Kozak.