Avaliando a eficácia da promoção de destinos turísticos no estado de Sergipe

Abstract

Among the many factors related to the countries for their tourism development, marketing is a challenging factor to create brands for their destinations. Companies, known in the literature as Destination Marketing Organizations (DMOs), usually develop the marketing execution of a destination, and one of jobs that they do is to evaluate the tourism promotion effectiveness. The present study focused on evaluating the tourism promotion effectiveness in the state of Sergipe, especially because the state is a destination in consolidation in national tourism, but in recent years the state has suffered a decrease in investments in promotion due to political and economic factors. This research is characterized as descriptive and exploratory with a quantitative approach. It was used the most recent model related to tourism promotion effectiveness: the Destination Advertising Response (DAR) Model, widespread by Stienmetz, Maxcy e Fesenmaier (2015), to analyse data on promotional campaign effectiveness through travel planning and money spent by visitors in six facets: tickets, accommodations, attractions, restaurants, events, and shopping. It was collected 384 questionnaires and, through descriptive statistics, it was possible to trace the sociodemographic profile of the respondents. Through the correlation analysis, the respondents' perceptions regarding the promotional materials of the state were identified. Using the independent sample test t and the multiple regression analyzes, it was possible to identify that, in general, the tourism promotion undertaken has been effective for five facets of travel, not being effective for facet "Tickets". In the group of consumers of traditional agencies, the promotion of attractions was not effective, whereas in the group of online travel agencies' consumers, non-effectiveness was verified in the "Accommodations" facet, and in the group of self-planners in the facets "Restaurants" and "Shopping". These results contributed to inferring recommendations in order to re-adjust the state's tourism promotional planning.