THE USE OF E-METRICS TO EVALUATE THE IMPACT OF THE ARWC ESTORIL PORTUGAL XPD RACE ON-LINE MEDIA COVERAGE G U E D E S D A S I LVA, A. & S A R M E N T O, M.
What is ADVENTURE RACING? Is it an emerging sport? A new form of Sport Tourism? Or just an extreme senseless endeavour?
Adventure Racing is... to test their limits, both physical and mental. with hi-tec clothing and equipment A long jouney in the nature for experienced and fit sportsman (sportswoman)
What is E-METRICS? A on-line simulation game invented by some university gigs? A Web-related standard of measurement? A performance criteria which measure what the success of internet sites (internal and external) and e-business and e-commerce in practical sense is.
In fact e-metrics (or web-analytics) are performance criteria which measure what is the actual and past success of internet sites, e- business and e-commerce. There are marketing, financial and technical criteria or variables. These three can be interconnected.
Why apply E-metrics to ESTORIL PORTUGAL expedition EVENT? Because Google Analytics is (still) free of charge? Because is a powerful tool to measure the immediate impact of your actions? Because it helps you tuning the contents of your information system and/or live coverage reports.
The 3 times for E-metrics in ARWC ESTORIL PORTUGAL XPD EVENT: Pre-event - E-metric was used to manage the information provided trough the Web-site and help guiding the marketing actions to attract teams and audiences, During the event - E-metrics was used to focus the media coverage efforts, higligthing the news and teams who attracted more attention from the audiences, namely the one coming from target tourism outbound markets, After the event - E-metrics was used to effectively report the impact of the event to the stakeholders, namely the direct impacts from their proprietary tools (Web Site, Live Coverage, Fan Pages, etc.)
Pre-event E-metrics In a report issued by the organisers 130 days prior to the event is interesting to cite the following excerpts:...after just over a month of operation the website of the World Championship Adventure Racing reveals surprising results. In fact, results from the new Google feature (Analytics) show that in one month, 1323 users of the site were more than 115 hours (accumulated) reviewing about 12,708 pages......it is clear from the analysis that a significant part of the visits (31%) are to the site entrance page whose contents satisfies the immediate need for information of the visitors, however it is important to note that the remaining 69% of the visits are very significant. On average these visitors consults 4.56 pages during 4 38, which gives about one minute per page visit which demonstrates that the density of information is appropriate and fixed the attention of users...
Pre-event E-metrics...another very important information we got from the report is the enormous geographical dispersion of the visits with 2,4 inhabitants per city of origin (554 from 69 countries). These numbers demonstrates that at this stage the visitors of the site are mainly the leaders of Adventure Racing teams who has an interest in evaluating a possible participation or the visitors are members of the 68 teams already registered.......another important information that we have observed, is that the origin of the visitors is mainly by direct access to the web site which shows that they already know the address and this is the result of the only active publicity we developed at this stage which is the sending of the newsletters to the national and international databases of the Portuguese Association of Adventure Racing....
Pre-event E-metrics www.arwc2009.com Map Overlay May 28, 2009 - Jun 27, 2009 Comparing to: Site Visits 1 993 2,787 visits came from 69 countries/territories Site Usage Figure 1. - Origin of the visits to the Web-Site of the ARWC Estoril Portugal XPD 2009. Visits 2,787 % of Site Total: 100.00% Pages/Visit 4.56 Site Avg: 4.56 (0.00%) Avg. Time on Site 00:04:38 Site Avg: 00:04:38 (0.00%) % New Visits 47.08% Site Avg: 46.93% (0.31%) Bounce Rate 31.65% Site Avg: 31.65% (0.00%) Country/Territory Visits Pages/Visit Avg. Time on Site % New Visits Bounce Rate
On-event E-metrics During the 10 days of the event is important to note the following evidences: During this period the Web-site attracted 18 123 viewers who made 6 357 daily visits of 10 15 to visit 14 pages (the total page view for the period was almost 1M) The 69 931 visits came from 95 countries, with France leading with 9111 visits, followed by Sweden with 7372 and with Portugal in third place with 5947 longer visits (11 in average).
On-event E-metrics www.arwc2009.com Cobertura regional 05/11/2009-15/11/2009 Comparação com: Site Visitas 1 9.111 Figure 69.931 2. - Origin visitantes of the vieram visits de during 95 países/territórios the Live Coverage on Web-Site (Source ARWC2009) Uso do site Visitas 69.931 Porcentagem do total do Páginas/visita 13,85 Média do site: Tempo médio no site 00:10:15 Média do site: % Novas visitas 22,35% Média do site: Taxa de rejeições 6,61% Média do site:
Post-event E-metrics During the 6 months of the event operation is important to note the following evidences: During this period the Web-site attracted 31 113 visitors who made 606 daily visits of 7 58 to visit 11 pages (the total page views for the period was almost 1,25 M) The visitors came from 126 countries, with Portugal leading with 15 525 visits originated by 4542 fans (half of them from Lisbon), followed by France with 12 922 (3655) and with Sweden in third place with 9683 (3655). The longer visits were done by the french audience with an average of 13,2 pages/ visit during 8 06.
Post-event E-metrics www.arwc2009.com Cobertura regional 26/05/2009-31/12/2009 Comparação com: Segmentos de visita Visitas 1 7.660 110.971 visitantes vieram de 3.376 cidades no segmento "Todas as visitas" Uso do site Figure 3. - Cities that originated visits for the ARWC Web-Site (Source ARWC2009) Visitas 110.971 Novos visitantes: 31.113 Páginas/visita 11,21 Novos visitantes: 10,60 Tempo médio no site 00:07:58 Novos visitantes: 00:05:59 % Novas visitas 28,04% Novos visitantes: 100,00% Taxa de rejeições 11,68% Novos visitantes: 12,45% Cidade Visitas Páginas/visita Tempo médio % Novas Taxa de
Post-event E-metrics Detailed study is possible in many ways namely study a country response to your event, or just a simple city: In figure 4 is possible to see the impact of the ARWC Web Site in France (please recall that english was the language used and the french were the 2nd country more active). Paris ranks nº1 out of 306 french cities who originated visits to the ARWC 2009 site with around 15% of visits and 20% of the French Fans. www.arwc2009.com Detalhe da cidade: Paris 26/05/2009-31/12/2009 Comparação com: Segmentos de visita Novos visitantes (Segmento) Todas as visitas (Segmento) 200 200 100 100 0 0 1 de jun 21 de jun 11 de jul 31 de jul 20 de ago 9 de set 29 de set 19 de out 8 de nov 28 de nov 18 de dez Esta cidade enviou 1.859 visitas no segmento "Todas as visitas" Conjunto de metas 1
Post-event E-metrics www.arwc2009.com Detalhe do país/território: France 26/05/2009-31/12/2009 Comparação com: Segmentos de visita Visitas 1 1.859 Figure Esse país/território 4. - Detailed enviou origin of 12.922 the visits visitas from por France meio de (Source 306 cidades ARWC2009) no segmento "Todas as visitas" Uso do site Visitas Páginas/visita Tempo médio no site % Novas visitas Taxa de rejeições
Main findings and conclusions The results demonstrate the importance of the web coverage in the context of the media intervention and the fundamental role of e- metrics in understanding the behaviour and the interest of a highly segmented and global audience. Adventure Racing has some inherent advantages who places it as one of the most interesting sports for web coverage, particularly the live follow up of teams during the race. Measurement of new media impacts are fundamental to enable the tourism organisations and other relevant stakeholders, to evaluate the effectiveness of their promotion plans and to assess the sustainability of their objectives.
OBRIGADO ALEXANDRE GUEDES DA SILVA
CESH 2011 ABSTRACT SUBMISSION FORM First Author (Presenting Author) First Name Alexandre Last Name Guedes da Silva Affiliation Email Research Student (PhD), Universidade Lusíada de Lisboa alix@portugalecoaventura.pt Second Author First Name Manuela Last Name Sarmento Affiliation Email Director, Centro de Investigação em Turismo, Inovação e Serviços, Universidade Lusíada de Lisboa manuela.sarmento@edu.ulusiada.pt Third Author First Name Last Name Affiliation Email PREFERRED TYPE OF PRESENTATION Oral X Poster THEMATIC SESSIONS (Your abstract must be included in one of the below Thematic Sessions. Please tick (x) as appropriate) space and geography values and markets practices and seasons politics and conflicts regions and development media and communication X sex and gender Olympics and Olympism hygiene and health technology and propaganda tourism, leisure and sport sport, glamour, and fashion marketing and aesthetics science and entertainment leisure and culture sport and the sense of pleasure sport and education
THE USE OF E-METRICS TO EVALUATE THE IMPACT OF THE ARWC ESTORIL PORTUGAL XPD RACE ON-LINE MEDIA COVERAGE. Guedes da Silva, A. 1 Sarmento, M. 2 1 Universidade Lusíada de Lisboa, Research Student, Portugal 2 Universidade Lusíada de Lisboa, Centro de Investigação em Turismo, Inovação e Serviços, Portugal The Tourism sector is recognized as one of the most successful economic sectors on-line and Sport events are growing in importance as tools to promote the Tourism destinations and products. As a consequence of this growing importance this paper investigates the use of current e-metrics tools in the evaluation of the impacts of the on-line media coverage of Sport events. We select to study the 7 th Adventure Racing Word Championship, a weeklong Sport Event held in the Autumn 2009 in Estoril and Center of Portugal. The results demonstrate the importance of the web coverage in the context of the media intervention and the fundamental role of e-metrics in the understanding of behavior and interest of a highly segmented and global audience. This paper concludes that the measurement of these impacts is fundamental to enable the tourism organizations and other relevant stakeholders, to evaluate the effectiveness of their promotion plans and to assess the sustainability of their objectives. Adlwarth, W. (2010). Customer Expectations and Behaviour in the Tourism Sector. In R. Conrady & M. Buck (Eds.), Trends and issues in Global Tourism 2010 (pp. 101-109). Heidelburg ; London: Springer. Chekalina, T., & Fuchs, M. (2009). A Meta-Comparison of Empirical Brand Metrics and Models for Tourism Destinations. Paper presented at the 3rd International Conference on Destination Branding and Marketing, Institute For Tourism Studies, Macao S.A.R., China. Hallmann, K., & Breuer, C. (2010). Image Fit between Sport Events and their Hosting Destinations from an Active Sport Tourist Perspective and its Impact on Future Behaviour. Journal of Sport & Tourism, 15(3), 215-237. Law, R., Leung, R., & Buhalis, D. (2009). Information Technology Applications in Hospitality and Tourism: A Review of Publications from 2005 to 2007. Journal of Travel & Tourism Marketing, 26(5), 599-623. doi: 10.1080/10548400903163160 Michopoulou, E., & Buhalis, D. (2008). Performance measures of net-enabled hypercompetitive industries: The case of tourism. International Journal of Information Management, 28(3), 168-180. doi: 10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2007.07.003 Middleton, V. T. C. (2009). Marketing in travel and tourism (4th ed. / Victor T.C. Middleton... [et al.]. ed.). Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann. Precourt, G. (2011). The Future of Marketing Research. Journal of Advertising Research, 51(1), 207. doi: 10.2501/jar- 51-1-207-208 Volo, S. (2010). Bloggers' reported tourist experiences: Their utility as a tourism data source and their effect on prospective tourists. Journal of Vacation Marketing, 16(4), 297-311. doi: 10.1177/1356766710380884 Weed, M. (2011). Methodology and Method in Sport & Tourism. Journal of Sport & Tourism, 16(2), 101-103. Ziakas, V., & Costa, C. A. (2011). The Use of an Event Portfolio in Regional Community and Tourism Development: Creating Synergy between Sport and Cultural Events. Journal of Sport & Tourism, 16(2), 149-175.