Tourist Perceptions of Cultural Value and Service Quality: Implications for Tourism Management Practices

Abstract

Cultural tourism has been observed as a competitiveness instrument into the destination, with the perceived value due to cultural significance of a certain destination and service quality to be given a pivotal role in determining tourist experiences and tourist intentions. Although more scholars have taken interest in this, little empirical evidence has concurrently investigated the structural relations between cultural value, service quality, tourist satisfaction and revisit intention as part of a single model. This research would be conducted to explore the relationship between perceived cultural value and service quality of tourists and levels of satisfaction and revisit intention as well as draw implications to tourism management practise. A cross sectional survey was performed on412 tourists visiting the specific cultural sites in a quantitative survey. The obtained data were processed with the help of the Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) that incorporated bootstrapping (5,000 resamples). According to the results, the cultural value is strongly and positively related to the service quality (β = 0.61, p < 0.001)and tourist satisfaction (β = 0.28, p < 0.01). Service quality has a strong predictive power concerning satisfaction (β = 0.47, p < 0.001)and satisfaction has a strong predictive power concerning revisit intention (β = 0.52, p < 0.001). The model accounts 54% of the variation in satisfaction and 49% in revisit intention predicting moderate to substantial power. The research results emphasise the strategic processes in the relationship between authentic cultural experiences and service quality as the means to boost tourist satisfaction and loyalty. Culturally, as a manager, destination managers need to put more emphasis on cultural authenticity, service excellence and experience design to enhance destination branding and growth of sustainable tourism.