African Journal of Hospitality, Tourism and Leisure (Jan 2020)
The relationship between tourist satisfaction and posttravel behaviour: Evidence from international tourists visiting Ethiopia
Abstract
The satisfactions and memorable experience of visitors is a result of both quality service and unique destination attributes. The aim of this research was to study the relationship between tourist satisfaction and post travel behaviour. A mixed research approach was employed and a cross sectional research design was carried out. To analyse the quantitative data, SPSS version 23 was applied to compute mean, independent sample T test, one way ANOVA, Pearson correlation and simple linear regression. Qualitative data were analysed through content analysis. The sample size of the study was 310 international tourists visiting Ethiopia. The findings revealed that visitors were satisfied with certain attributes such as cultural heritage, natural scenery and landscape, friendliness of locals, quality of accommodation, tour guides and information, the prices of goods, safety and security and nightlife entertainment. However, visitors were not satisfied with attributes of shopping facilities, communication (mobile and internet facilities), health/ medical services, washroom and toilet facilities, presence of beggars, clean and unpolluted environment. It was found that the post travel behaviour is positive (M=3.825) indicating that visitors have the intention to revisit Ethiopia, and to recommend it to others to visit, and they are willing to share their positive experiences of the destination on social media. Product moment correlation coefficient (r= .492) showed a fairly strong or moderate relationship between tourist satisfaction and post travel behaviour. The results of the simple linear regression portrayed that the predictor variable called tourist satisfaction explained 24.2% of the proportion of the variance in visitors’ post travel behaviour as explained by the model (R2=.242, F (1, 309) = 97.945, p<.01). Hence, tourist satisfaction significantly predicted the outcome variable which is visitors’ post travel behaviour (b1 = 0.591, t= 9.897, p<.01). The major conclusion drawn from the findings was the need to improve the satisfaction of visitors and create positive post travel behaviour, and thus tourism and hospitality organizations should strive to offer better services of attributes like shopping facilities, health and medical services, wash room and toilet facilities that are clean and an unpolluted environment as well as strive to resolve any problems in line with beggars and hustlers menacing tourists.
