Research On Chinese Outbound Tourists’ Satisfaction About South Korean Tourism

In 2014, China’s outbound tourism was booming, the number of outbound tourists reached 100 million. South Korea is one of the most popular overseas destinations. In 2014, Chinese tourists’ consumption in South Korea was 18.6 trillion won, which means every 17 Chinese tourists create one job position for South Korea. Chinese tourists make a great contribution to South Korea national economy. In March of 2015, the signature of the China-South Korea FTA may launch a new era of China-South Korea’s tourism development.The rapid development of outbound tourism has a hot topic for many researchers. However, the previous studies about the Korea tourism focused on three aspects: South Korea tourism development model, China and South Korea tourism communication, and Korean investment in China’s tourism industry. Although many studies have explored the outbound tourism, few attention has been paid to the outbound tourists. This study, therefore, targets at the outbound tourists, and aims to explore their expectations and satisfaction of travelling in South Korea.First, based on the theories of outbound tourism, destination image, customer satisfaction, the visitors’ satisfaction research, empirical research is conducted. Tourism services in south Korean are divided into eight dimensions:the hotel service, restaurant service, retail store service, the police service, customs service, travel agency service, scenic spots, and public transport services. Targeting at the Chinese outbound tourists to South Korea, a total of 581 valid data were collected. Importance-Performance Analysis method was used to analyze the data. The expectations and satisfactions of outbound Chinese tourists were explored, and the existing gaps were analyzed.The findings indicate that Chinese outbound tourists are generally satisfied with the service quality of South Korea, but the satisfaction is still below its expectations. Among them, visitors pay more attention to travel agency service and they care less about the police service. The scenic spot service satisfaction is the highest, the lowest satisfaction is police services; The largest gap between importance and satisfaction is travel agency services, the smallest is the hotel service. In the study on service quality Appearance and tidiness of hotel staff (4.30) is the top 1, the second is the hotel front staff show Proper attitude (polite, patient and attentive) (4.27), tied for third place is a clean driver (4.26) and the clean and pleasant scenic environment (4.26), the fifth is the hotel staff can provide considerate and professional services (4.24); The gap top 5 between satisfaction and expectations is:the driver with good language and communication skills (0.74)> Honesty of tour guides (0.65)> the police with good language and communication skills (0.64)> Provision of balanced sightseeing and shopping programmers (0.62)> hotel staff with good language and communication skills (0.59) and a shop assistant has a good language and communication skills (0.59).This paper provides effective suggestions based on the research results. The findings may provide useful guidance to service enhancement and tourism marketing of South Korea. In addition, it also facilitates the development and management of Chinese outbound tourism. Furthermore, the findings of this study shed light on enhancing service quality, and attract more Chinese travelers.