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

Year 2011, Volume: 3 Issue: 2, 11 - 22, 01.12.2011

Ahmad Rusdi Abdullah Mahadzirah Mohamad Shafiek Mokhlis

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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