Tourism Management Studies
Year:2013 | Volume:7 | Issue:20|Papers Count:7

The chief goal of hotels is to satisfy and retain their customers. Previous researches have shown that contented hotel guests are more likely to revisit a hotel than guests who were somehow dissatisfied. This study attempts to scrutinize the relationship between service quality perceptions and customer loyalty in the hotels located in the city of Shiraz. The other specific purposes of this study are the following: 1) to investigate the perceived service quality and customer loyalty in hotels of Shiraz, 2) to scrutinize relations between service quality and customer loyalty dimensions, and 3) to provide suggestions to improve service quality and customer loyalty in the four-star hotels of Shiraz. In this research, perceived service quality was measured through five dimensions of SERVQUAL (tangibles, reliability, assurance, responsiveness, and empathy) developed by Parasuraman et al. (1988). Also, customer loyalty was measured by the questionnaire developed by Skogland and Siguaw (2004). Afterwards, 196 questionnaires were collected and analyzed using Kolmogorov- Smirnov (K-S) test, Spearman correlation coefficient, and Binomial Test. Results demonstrated a strong correlation between service quality perceptions and customer’s loyalty. Furthermore, among the 5 dimensions of Servqual (tangibles, reliability, assurance, responsiveness, and empathy), the tangibles dimension showed the least correlation with customer loyalty, emphasizing more importance on human elements of service quality.

Climatic and geographical features of Gorgan (e.g. lying in the vicinity of North - and Razavi-khorasan, Semnan, Tehran, and Mazandaran provinces) on the one hand and its cultural and historical attractions (e.g. Existence of Turkman people and their handicrafts) on the other have rendered this city into a prominent tourist spot. This research, aims to evaluate the Gorgan - tourists’ satisfaction level and the principal factors affecting it. After distribution of 250 questionnaires, data were analyzed through descriptive and analytical statistics methods. Results indicate that four factors including service quality, environmental quality, host behavior quality, and services cost, can explain more than %54 of the variance of the variables. Also, a significant correlation is observed between the mentioned factors and the tourists’ satisfaction level. At the end, some suggestions are proposed for improving tourists’ satisfaction and tourism development in Gorgan.

Nowadays, sport tourism has greatly expanded to include a wide range of activities, based on which, by arranging facilities and considering the marketing approaches, this type of tourism can be developed in Iran and in the Ardabil province particularly. Despite the importance of sport tourism, yet no serious study has taken place in this respect in the mentioned province or in Iran at all. Since sport tourism is a new concept in Iran’s tourism industry and Ardabil province, so the important issue is how to utilize these opportunities and capabilities in a right manner from the marketing perspective. In line of what was said above, in this opportunity, it is attempted to review the sport tourism, and in the meanwhile, to investigate the perspective of domestic sport tourists about sport tourism marketing mix, and to develop an appropriate pattern accordingly. This is a descriptive- survey study, from the research method perspective. Data are gathered through secondary and primary sources. The target population of the study are the domestic tourists who have travelled to Ardebil, Meshkin Shahr and Sar' e Ein cities, which are the major sport tourism centers of Ardebil province. Therefore, a questionnaire was designed based on the personal and behavioral characteristics of the tourists and the 8 P’s of sport tourism marketing mix; afterwards, the questionnaires were distributed among 110 sport tourists by means of accidental sampling method. Appropriate analysis were made for each of the marketing mix components by utilizing different statistical tests namely, Kolmogrov - Smirnov, Binomial distribution, one sample T- test and Friedman test. In general, results of Friedman test shows that there were weaknesses regarding to the components of “productivity and quality”, “process” and “place and time” according to priority. Also based on the findings of research a mathematical pattern was developed.

Rural tourism is one of the growing sectors in tourism industry that can play an important role in creating jobs, revitalizing rural life and preserving various historical heritages of rural areas, and ultimately shaping an integrated and sustainable development. This paper aims to investigate the different socio-economic and environmental impact of tourism on the village of Qouri Qaleh in the province of Kermanshah. This place attracts thousands of tourists annually due to its unique natural and historical heritages. The research is based on descriptive – analytical methods. A field work was conducted to collect the required data with the help of 150 questionnaires which were distributed among residents of the village, using random sampling. Data were analyzed via SPSS. Results revealed a positive opinion of the rural residents about the economic impacts of tourism such as employment opportunities and increase in people’s income. However, tourism development has led to land speculation and a rapid land-use change at the cost of agricultural decline. Also, degradation of environment by water pollution and overuse of rural natural resources, have created new challenges for tourism development in this village. From social point of view there has been a considerable decline in rural urban migration, increase in people’s knowledge and improvement of rural housing. At the end, the paper presents some recommendations for tourism management and balanced development with respect to the carrying capacity of the area.

Decision making about selecting quality-based programs is a sensitive problem in the firms looking for effectiveness and profitability advantages. The aim of this paper is to utilize Simple Additive Weighting (SAW) method to deal with prioritizing quality-based investments in service firms under fuzzy environment. For this purpose, at first, alternatives (types of investment) will be identified. Then, exogenous preferences are identified according to the competitive environment and endogenous preferences are determined using the Five-Gaps Model of service quality and gaps analysis. Finally, between different types of investment, the best option is recommended. Also, a real casea travel agency - is studied to demonstrate the proposed method. The results indicate that the FiveGaps Analysis model combined with multiple criteria decision making (MCDM) and fuzzy set theory have high ability in evaluation of quality-based programs in service firms.

The perception of visitors' behavioral intentions is of great importance for destination managers and marketers. The present study is about to study the effective factors on visitors behavioral intentions in tourist destinations, which examines the effect of destination attributes ,perceived quality of destination offerings, perceived value and satisfaction on behavioral intentions. The sample of the current study considersall the visitors of Torghabe tourist destination in Mashhad city in the summer of 2011 and chooses 494 visitors randomly. The research questionnaire was developed by the researcher after confirming the validity and reliability of data and then followed by their distribution; finally data collection was done through structural equation modeling and analyzed in LIZREL software. The results shows destination attributes have direct positive effect on perceived quality of destination offerings; and on the other hand, perceived value and satisfaction are under direct effect of perceived value. Furthermore, the positive direct effect of perceived value and satisfaction on behavioral intentions was confirmed. The results also indicated that visitors perceived value of destination offerings has an indirect effect on behavioral intentions through mediating variables of satisfaction and perceived value.

In this study, willingness to pay (WTP) of the visitors of "shahre sukhte" has been determined with the use of conditional valuation method (CVM) and dichotomous choice questionnaire. Willingness to pay is calculated with Logit model, and the parameters of the model are estimated by maximum likelihood method. Results revealed that 58% of the research samplae were willing to pay for their visit to "shahre sukhte". The average willingness to pay for each visit to the place equaled to 6563 Rials and the total recreational value was estimated to be more than 1292 Million Rials per year. Additionally, it was indicated that variables of age, income, Antiquities-related occupations or fields of study, and the perceived importance of protection of historical collections, had significant effects on willingness to pay. The influencing factors on willingness to pay were related to the importance of historical collections protection, occupation or field of study associated with the Antiquities, family size, age and income, respectively.