Rookie Tourism Destinations—The Effects of Attractiveness Factors on Destination Image and Revisit Intention with the Satisfaction Mediation Effect

Abstract

Emerging tourism destinations repeatedly face many managerial challenges, often leading to common pitfalls and rookie mistakes. The current study aims to analyze relationships between destination attractiveness factors (Destination Amenities, Tourism Infrastructure and Accessibility, Active Family Destination, Hospitality and Services, and Social–Safety–Economic Values), satisfaction, destination image, and revisit intentions to test a mediating role of satisfaction between destination attractiveness factors and both destination image and revisit choices within so-called rookie destinations. For this purpose, a quantitative study was carried out using a questionnaire as an instrument for data collection. Data were collected from a sample of 2030 visitors to Serbia. Structural equation modeling (SEM) in R was applied to analyze the data. The results revealed the positive direct effects of destination attractiveness factors on satisfaction, destination image, and revisit intentions. Moreover, the research confirmed the mediating role of satisfaction in the relationship between destination attractiveness and destination image, and revisit intentions. The results are further discussed from the perspective of emerging tourism destinations to make their management more sustainable for the future and mitigate the repetition of rookie mistakes.

Perceived Value in Sustainable Coastal and Marine Destinations: A Study of Jacó in Costa Rica

“…According to the results of the investigation, three main dimensions were found: the emotional-functional value, the social value, and the economic value. These results coincide with Lee et al [28], as for these authors the influence on the intention to revisit and recommend a destination is associated with visitor satisfaction, which is directly related to emotional, functional, and economic values; this is also consistent with other recent studies [31,34,35]. Nevertheless, in our results, emotional and functional values were united in a single factor.…”

“…The literature also found how the value perceived by tourists has a significant positive impact on place attachment, which in turn has a significant positive impact on revisit intention [34], as well as affecting positive direct results of the attractiveness factors of the destination, such as satisfaction, the image of the destination, and review intentions [35].…”

Evaluating Nature-Based Tourism Destination Attractiveness with a Fuzzy-AHP Approach

“…The results of this study have other contributions to the study of destination attractiveness measurement and supply-demand interaction. Even though a number of empirical studies on destination attractiveness have been conducted [85][86][87][88][89], there remains a dearth of literature on attractiveness of NBTDs specifically. One exception is An et al [90], who used thirteen national park attributes to determine destination attractiveness for naturebased tourism.…”

Destination Familiarity and Perceived Attractiveness of Four Polish Tourism Cities

“…The subjective assessment of tourist attractiveness is often related to the concept of the destination image [43,44], and uses methods developed for the needs of multidimensional analysis of this image [6,8,12,32,45]. Researchers often use the concept of the destination's perceived tourist attractiveness [43,[46][47][48].…”