Determining factors of tourists’ loyalty to beach tourism destinations: a structural model

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate and develop an integrated theoretical relationship by including destination image and attitudes into the quality-value-satisfaction-loyalty paradigm in the context of beach tourism. Design/methodology/approach A personal-administered survey was conducted using a convenient sampling technique to collect data from 601 tourists who had visited popular beach destinations in Bangladesh. Then, the structural relationships between the factors likely to affect tourist attitudes and loyalty were examined. Findings The findings reveal that both service quality and perceived values have a direct effect on destination image, tourist attitudes and satisfaction. Additionally, destination image and satisfaction significantly affect tourist attitudes and loyalty. Research limitations/implications The direct relationship of perceived service quality and perceived value with tourist loyalty was ignored in the model due to reporting consecutive indirect relationship between them in prior studies. Practical implications These findings contribute to the extension of theoretical and managerial knowledge, especially in a beach tourism setting, where little research has been done to investigate the proposed relationships. Originality/value The originality of this study lies in providing theoretical and empirical evidence regarding the effect of service quality and perceived value, especially on destination image and tourist attitude to behaviour in the loyalty model, which has been scarcely examined in the prior tourism literature.

The Influence of Tourists’ Experience on Destination Loyalty: A Case Study of Hue City, Vietnam

“…It is an important principle that plays a role in a tourist's choices. The destination image is considered to be a key aspect of tourist decisionmaking [9][10][11][21][22][23]. The impact of tourism on countries and local destination economic growth has been widely confirmed [24][25][26] and boost the competition between countries in the tourism industry [27,28].…”

“…As a significant determinant of tourist behavior, motivation has been widely researched by academics since the 1940s. At the same time, some researchers have tried to examine their relationships with other constructs, such as destination image [44,45], destination loyalty [8,10,11,13,14]. Since the beginning of these areas of study, motivation has been an important subject in leisure and tourism literature review [46,47].…”

“…Previous researchers have focused on various relationships between destination images, tourist experience, and tourist loyalty, which has been inconclusive in several previous studies. Researchers have found that tourist loyalty is directly influenced by destination image [9,10], and some pointed out an indirect relationship [11][12][13][14]. Although researchers have offered hypotheses regarding the role of the tourist experience in some related aspects, scholars have yet to address the impact of tourist experience as a moderator in an overall relationship; such empirical investigation is still incomplete.…”

The Fable of Regional Tourists’ Loyalty to Bhutan

“…All these mainstream literatures indicate the perceived value as antecedent of satisfaction and loyalty. Perceived value is also found to have direct effect on destination image, tourist attitudes and satisfaction and additionally destination image and satisfaction significantly affected tourist attitudes and loyalty (Hasan, Abdullah, Lew, & Islam, 2019).For instance, the empirical evidences show the existence of the chain of constructs, service quality-perceived value-customer satisfaction-loyalty in a service setting (Gallarza, Saura, & Moreno, 2013). Sun et al (2013) reported that perceived value for the past two decades had received great attention from the marketing researchers due its significance as a factor that enables better understanding of consumer behavior and loyalty behavior.…”

Every storm will pass: Examining expat’s host country-destination image, cultural intelligence and renewed destination loyalty in COVID-19 tourism

“…A strong DNI can naturally create a decisive advantage in safeguarding destination loyalty in post COVID-19 tourism (Chaulagain et al, 2019;Gössling et al, 2020;Zenker & Kock, 2020). The destination loyalty concept has been attracting tourism researchers' interest for the last decades with a special focus given to its conceptualization (Prayag & Ryan, 2012) and antecedents (Lindblom et al, 2018;Hasan et al, 2020. Although destination loyalty has frequently been conceptualized with attitudinal and behavioral loyalty dimensions (Kumar et al, 2020;Liu et al, 2019), behavioral loyalty has been criticized due to only focusing on the actual outcome of tourist's decision-making process while overlooking tourist intentions and motives (Yoon & Uysal, 2005).…”