Repeat Visitation and Spending at
Events: Hogs and Muscle Cars
Jennifer Beedle
Erick Byrd
UNCG
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
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
Repeat vs. First Time Visitors
Who Spends More?
First-time Visitors
 Spend more money than
repeat visitors (Alegre and
Juaneda, 2006), (Petrick,
2004)
 Participate in more tourist
activities (Donnegan, 2004).
Repeat Visitors
 Stay longer in a destination
and spend more money.
(Donnegan, 2004)
The Study
 Purpose
 To investigate if repeat visitation has an influence on
visitors’ spending during events in a rural setting.
Surry County, North Carolina
Surry County, NC
Method
 Data was gathered from two events in Surry
County, North Carolina
 Convenience sampling via visitor intercept
 N=394
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.
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.
Results
Test of Significance Between First-time and Repeat Visitor Spending (T-test)
Spending
Category
Mean FirsttimeVisitor
N=194
Mean Repeat
Visitor
N=163
t score
Probability
Hotel/Motel
$320
$142
-5.6
.000
Restaurant
$181
$118
-4
.000
Shopping
$144
$90
-3.2
.001
Entertainment
$50
$25
-3.3
.001
Automobile Ops $77
$45
-4.1
.000
Food & Supplies $44
$27
-2.3
.021
Taxi
$0.80
$0.12
-1.6
.115
Other
$12
$16
.8
.433
Total Spent
$817.80
$463.12
-5.5
.000
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
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.
Questions?