The Effect of Visual Advertising on Selecting Ramsar as a Tourist Destination

One of the main causes of tourism recession in Iran is lack of informing as well as inappropriate advertising in the domestic and foreign arenas. Considering the role of advertising in attracting and retaining tourists, and the many sums spent on advertising every year, the correct use of credit and its effectiveness is important. This research is applied in terms of its purpose, and descriptive-survey in terms of nature. The effectiveness of advertising in this research has been evaluated in four dimensions: attention, interest, willingness and action. The statistical population of this study was tourists who had chosen Ramsar as their tourism destination during the period of March, 2015. In this study, the sample size of 384 people was calculated using Cochran's formula. For analyzing the data, the structural equation modeling (SEM) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) were used to analyze the data in two SPSS and LISRE software packages. Findings showed that visual advertising is effective on people’s attention, inclining and eventually choosing a destination, but has no effect on the tourists’ interest in destinations. Also, the effect of paying attention to demographic variables on the advertising effectiveness is another result of this research. Among the visual ads tested, TV, billboards, internet advertising, brochure, and magazines have the most important role in attracting tourists. In addition to this, it should be noted that marketing planning and advertising of tourism should be carried out continuously and in a systematic way and constantly updated with global and international methods with a regional perspective