Determining the Importance of Stopover Destination Attributes: Integrating Stated Importance, Choice Experiment, and Eye-Tracking Measures

Abstract

Stopover tourism is an important but neglected area of study. This article combines a discrete choice experiment with eye-tracking measures and self-stated attribute importance ratings to analyze stopover destination preferences. A sample of Australian residents shows safety is the most critical determinant of stopover destination attractiveness based on both the importance ratings and choice model results, but that it does not receive the greatest amount of visual attention. Seven attributes showed little consistency between the methods. However, when the measures are combined into one choice model, there are insights into associations between ratings, amounts of visual attention, and the final impact of an attribute on the choice outcome. Findings indicate the overall importance of each attribute and show how attribute importance varies across the sample and during the choice process. The article thus illustrates how different measures can be combined to study preferences for destination attributes in a specific travel context.