Determining Visitor Guide Appeal Using Eye Tracking and In-depth Interviews: The Case of Ottawa, Canada

Author Bios (50 Words for each Author)

Ye (Sandy) Shen is a PhD candidate in the School of Hospitality, Food and Tourism Management, University of Guelph. She received her master’s degree in Human Geography at Peking University and studied tourism management at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Her research interests include gamification in tourism, tourism experience, and destination marketing.

Michael Lever is currently pursuing his PhD in Management at the University of Guelph, where he intends to incorporate his background in consumer behaviour, management, and marketing and apply it to concepts in tourism, particularly those of destination image and place branding and how they can influence both destination marketing practices and tourism and place theory.

Dr. Marion Joppe is a Professor in the School of Hospitality, Food and Tourism Management, University of Guelph, Canada. She specializes in destination planning, development and marketing. She has extensive private and public sector experience. Marion is the President of TTRA International.

Abstract (150 Words)

Many destination management organizations have treated brochures as an important platform to deliver various travel information. However, how people read a tourist brochure has not been investigated adequately. This may pose obstacles in designing an appealing brochure. There is a need to understand how people read a brochure and what information is most appealing to them. This research took the Ottawa Visitor Guide 2017/18 as a case and used a triangulated approach that included observational eye-tracking, a survey, and in-depth interviews to provide more insightful explanations. This study demonstrates how eye-tracking technique can be used in the assessment of the effectiveness of a tourist brochure, generates insights into consumers’ visual behaviours, and gives implications on the design of a tourist brochure.

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Determining Visitor Guide Appeal Using Eye Tracking and In-depth Interviews: The Case of Ottawa, Canada

Many destination management organizations have treated brochures as an important platform to deliver various travel information. However, how people read a tourist brochure has not been investigated adequately. This may pose obstacles in designing an appealing brochure. There is a need to understand how people read a brochure and what information is most appealing to them. This research took the Ottawa Visitor Guide 2017/18 as a case and used a triangulated approach that included observational eye-tracking, a survey, and in-depth interviews to provide more insightful explanations. This study demonstrates how eye-tracking technique can be used in the assessment of the effectiveness of a tourist brochure, generates insights into consumers’ visual behaviours, and gives implications on the design of a tourist brochure.