What Landmarks Do Visitors Remember about a Place?

Abstract

This paper examines the features of photographs that affect the memorability of landmarks that tourists walk past while visiting a place. Empirical results, based on surveys of cruise passengers that visited Bar Harbor, Maine, suggest that a mix of salient images (e.g., the ocean) and unique characteristics of a place (e.g., architectural elements) increase a visitor’s likelihood of remembering a landmark. An extension to the analysis shows that survey respondents are unlikely to attribute “fake” landmarks from different places to their day spent in Bar Harbor. The methods from this study can be employed in other places to examine the behavior and perceptions of tourists, and, more generally, photographs can be used to learn about how people interact with the places around them.