An Empirical Assessment of Customer Satisfaction in Tourism

Abstract

Research in service quality has advanced substantially over recent years. However; little has been done in measuring the quality of tourist experiences and how different quality factors impact on global satisfaction of tourists. This paper sets out to fill this gap by modelling quality and satisfaction judgements of college students within four distinct tourist encounters. Applying a novel approach, respondents rated. an entire service setting by proxy when evaluating a picture in which certain quality variables had been manipulated. The findings from the regression models show that distinct quality factors are significant for different tourist encounters. In addition, significant differences were also found in the extent to which different quality factors affect students fiom different cultures. The results should be of value to managers in the relevant tourist industries.