Impact of Advertising and Public Relations on Tourism Development in Da Nang, Vietnam

Introduction

Failure to appropriately understand the impact of advertising and public relations on visit intention for tourist destinations creates critical issues for tourism development in Vietnam. In 2015, Trip Advisor and New York Times selected Da Nang, Vietnam as one of the top Asia tourist destinations. However, in 2016, Da Nang tourism is threatened by difficulties such as the latest incident of shipwreck on the Han River and the problem of polluted water due to toxic waste water from a steel factory in Vietnam. This ultimately resulted in the decreased number of visitors to Da Nang. Although the factory compensated USD500 million for the environmental violation, suggesting solutions proposed to strengthen the confidence of tourists to the image of tourism in the city of Da Nang is essential. The combination of the advertisement and public relations is the most optimal solution to improve the image of Da Nang.

Effects of public relations and advertising on consumer decision making have been studied by recent research. Gretzel, Yuan, and Fesenmaier (2000) and Kotler and Armstrong (2005) report the importance of public relations and advertising on destination image. Pratt, McCabe, Cortes-Jimenez, and Blake (2010), Pike and Page (2014), and Gretzel, Fesenmaier, Formica, and O’Leary (2006) report that marketing through public relations and advertising can stimulate consumer demand effectively. Little research has focused on predicting consumer buying intention by advertising and public relations. The purpose of this study is thus to examine the model of tourist visit intention predicted by advertising and public relations.

The assumptions of the study are if there are significant relationships between advertising or public relations and tourists’ visit intention which is predicted by attitudes, social norms, and controls. Tourists with a high attitude often visit a certain destination because they believe that they can get benefits from the destination visit. Tourists with a high social norm often visit a destination because they believe that their visit would be approved and respected by other people. Tourists with a high control often visit a place where they can control the access to that place; they trust in certain online travel agents (OTA) so they use the OTA as the access to that place. The survey questions based on the theory of planned behavior (Ajzen & Fishbein, 1980) were distributed to a random sample of 100 tourists in Da Nang in mid-June 2016. Responses to were analyzed in structure equation modeling to find key factors for destination brand development.