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Maximizing Visitor Spending at Events: Strategies for Attracting Repeat Guests

Enhance economic growth in rural areas through festival and event tourism by understanding spending behavior of repeat vs. first-time visitors. Study in Surry County, North Carolina, reveals insights on visitor spending patterns and the impact of repeat visitation. Results show that first-time visitors tend to spend more, emphasizing the importance of attracting new guests while maintaining a base of repeat visitors. Marketing efforts should focus on a mix of both types of visitors for optimal economic benefits. Future research can explore if these findings are consistent across different events and destinations.

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Maximizing Visitor Spending at Events: Strategies for Attracting Repeat Guests

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  1. Repeat Visitation and Spending at Events: Hogs and Muscle Cars Jennifer Beedle Erick Byrd UNCG

  2. Road Map • Festival and Special Event Tourism • Economic Enhancement • Visitor Spending at Festivals and Special Events • Repeat Visitors vs. First Time Visitors • The Study • Purpose and Methods • Preliminary Results and Conclusions

  3. Festival and Special Event Tourism • Rural communities look to enhance the area through tourism. • Festivals and special events are a large component of the tourism product in rural areas. • Understanding characteristics of the special event and festival visitor is key to achieving economic goals. • Repeat visitors vs. First-time visitors

  4. Repeat vs. First Time Visitors Who Spends More? First-time Visitors Repeat Visitors Spend more money than repeat visitors (Alegre and Juaneda, 2006), (Petrick, 2004) Participate in more tourist activities (Donnegan, 2004). Stay longer in a destination and spend more money. (Donnegan, 2004)

  5. The Study • Purpose • To investigate if repeat visitation has an influence on visitors’ spending during events in a rural setting.

  6. Surry County, North Carolina

  7. Surry County, NC

  8. Method • Data was gathered from two events in Surry County, North Carolina • Convenience sampling via visitor intercept • N=394

  9. Results • Average party size attending one of the two events consisted of mostly adults. • 3.4 adults • .06 children • The majority of visitors (80%) spent at least one night in the area. • Most (75%) of the visitors stayed in hotels or motels. • Average travel party spending was $661 goods and services in Surry County.

  10. Results • 53% First-time visitors • 47% Repeat visitors • First-time visitors spent significantly more in every spending category than repeat visitors, excluding taxi and other.

  11. Results Test of Significance Between First-time and Repeat Visitor Spending (T-test)

  12. Conclusions • Results confirm the findings of previous research studies indicating first-time visitors spend more than repeat visitors. • Familiarity with location • More efficient spending • Redundancy of experiences • Access to discounts and rewards

  13. Conclusions • It is vital for events to attract new visitors from year to year. • Creating and keeping repeat visitors is still critical • More effective and efficient from a marketing standpoint. • Mix of first-time and repeat visitors should be seen as the ideal • Future research should identify whether or not this holds true for other events or if it is destination specific.

  14. Questions?

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