Analysis of the impact of length of stay on the quality of service experience, satisfaction and loyalty

Abstract

Although length of stay is a relevant variable in destination management, little research has been produced connecting it with tourists' postconsumption behaviour. This research compares the postconsumption behaviour of same day visitors with overnight tourists in a sample of 398 domestic vacationers at two Mediterranean heritageandbeach destinations. Although economic research on length of stay posits that there are destination benefits in longer stays, sameday visitors score higher in most of the postconsumption variables under study. Significant differences arise in hedonic aspects of the tourist experience and destination loyalty. Thus, we propose that length of stay can be used as a segmentation variable. Furthermore, destination management organisations need to consider length of stay when designing tourism policies. The tourist product and communication strategies might be adapted to different vacation durations.

The Value of Sustainable Tourism Destinations in the Eyes of Visitors

“…Our finding that the length of stay exerts a negative effect on both satisfaction and intention to recommend, although to a certain extent concerning for the local tourism development (but reassuring on the unlikeliness that these destinations shall suffer from overtourism) is in line with some extant studies [84]. Likely, this result depends on the scarce variety of the tourist experiences made available by destinations strongly focused on a single (or very few) tourism products, so that tourists staying for a long time cannot find enough different activities to live a new experience every single day.…”

“…While the stay length has no influence on image, it affects both satisfaction and intention to recommend negatively (as also found in some extant studies, e.g., [84]), likely because the visitors who spend the longest time in these destinations have a second home or friends and relatives there, thus they are so familiar with those places that they do no longer perceive them as tourist destinations, but rather as being at home. In general, self-employed visitors tend to be more satisfied and more willing to recommend the destination than tourists with another occupational status, contrasting previous findings [85].…”

Management of Loyalty and Its Main Antecedents in Sport Organizations: A Systematic Analysis Review

“…There are, however, three variables that are repeated in many proposals and models: satisfaction, trust, and commitment ( Garbarino and Johnson, 1999 ; Hennig-Thurau et al, 2001 ; Bansal et al, 2004 ; Rauyruen and Miller, 2007 ). Service quality is an another variable that most commonly appears in the literature on consumer loyalty, and it is included by authors such as ( Cronin and Taylor, 1992 ; Hur et al, 2011 ; Kim and Trail, 2011 ; Mandhachitara and Poolthong, 2011 ; Pérez-Cabañero et al, 2017 ). Most authors who study loyalty from a marketing viewpoint do so, firstly, from the perspective of behavioral loyalty, i.e., repeating the exchange relationship ( Chaudhuri and Holbrook, 2001 ; Szymanski and Henard, 2001 ; Chiou and Drogue, 2006 ), and secondly, from the perspective of attitudinal loyalty ( Kunkel et al, 2013 , 2019 ).…”

Where day trippers and tourists go: comparing the spatio-temporal distribution of Mainland Chinese visitors in Hong Kong using Weibo data

“…Chhabra, 2006;Murillo et al, 2013;Rodríguez et al, 2018;Russo, 2002;Wong & Zheng, 2016), socio-demographic characteristics, travel motivation and transport choice of day trippers and tourists (e.g. Pérez-Cabañero et al, 2017;Rodríguez et al, 2018). In general, studies on day trippers are relatively rare because it is difficult to obtain statistical information on this particular type of city visitorsas distinguishing day trippers from tourists requires data of high temporal resolution (Candela & Figini, 2012;Suriñach et al, 2017;Wynen, 2013).…”