The Effects of Public Transport Performance on Destination Satisfaction.

Abstract

Public transport has become an important component of urban tourism. In this context, one of the purposes of this study is to investigate public transport performance in the Turkish city of Eskişehir and the other purpose is to determine overall destination satisfaction of tourists who came to Eskişehir. The relationship between public transport performance and overall destination satisfaction of tourists was also examined. Within the framework of these goals, from November 2015 through April 2016, a total of 259 surveys were conducted through face to face interviews from tourists who are about to leave from bus/train stations in Eskişehir. Explanatory factor analysis was conducted to reduce the number of items occurring in the scales. To examine the impacts of public transport performance on tourists’ overall destination satisfaction, regression analysis was used from methods of multivariate data analysis. According to the research findings, public transport performance can be analyzed in five headings as; “ease of use”, “physical condition”, “infrastructure”, “staff”, and “timing”. However, the findings of this research indicated that tourists’ overall destination satisfaction can be examined in one dimension as; “destination satisfaction”. According to the results of regression analysis performed, “destination satisfaction” is affected by infrastructure, ease of use, timing and physical condition, respectively. Based on the research results, recommendations for future studies and tourism practitioners are suggested.

Keywords

• Public Transport
• Destination Satisfaction
• Urban Tourism
• Eskişehir