EXAMINING THE STRUCTURAL RELATIONSHIPS OF SERVICE RECOVERY, DESTINATION IMAGE AND BEHAVIOURAL INTENTIONS OF FOREIGN TOURISTS: A PROPOSAL

Abstract

The tourism industry remains one of the important sectors expected to continually generate revenues and contribute to Malaysia’s economic growth. The competitive situation within the tourism industry worldwide requires Malaysia to a develop strategic marketing strategy in line with tourist’s preference to sustainably retain its reputation as one of the favourable tourist destinations in the region. A review of the literatures reveals that tourism is an image-driven industry, where tourists assess their travel experience as a whole and they associate destinations with the entire ranges of local producers and suppliers. Service failures in tourism industry are inevitable, hence this study attempts to examine the relationships between Service Recovery Satisfaction and post Destination Image from the perspectives of tourists. Such efforts would make tourism policy makers aware of the service recovery practices undertaken by the tourism organisations and collaborate with them to enhance the destination image. Based on the premise that customer loyalty has great benefits to entities such as tourist destination, this study develops a model to evaluate the effect of Satisfaction with Service Recovery on the Loyalty Intention of tourist and the relationship between Destination Image and Loyalty Intention. Randomlyselected respondents from the population of international tourists departing from international airports are selected to be involved in the study. Factor Analysis was used to test the factorial validity of constructs and Structural Equation Modelling was used to test the goodness of the proposed hypothesised model designed to consider Service Recovery, Destination Image and Loyalty Intention simultaneously. Findings of this study will provide useful insights to tourism organization pertaining to appropriate strategies that should be undertaken by hoteliers to improve the image of the destination and ultimately influence tourist positive post-visit behaviours such as repurchase and dissemination of positive word-of-mouth.

Keywords

• Service Recovery, Destination Image, Behaviour Intention

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