The Study Of Tourists’ Loyalty Based On The Place Theory

The sustainable development of travel destination depends on the tourists flow,which is influenced by the tourists’ recommend intention(word of mouth)and revisit intention.In other words,the success of tourism destination depends on the loyal tourists both in tourism and other industries.However,the tourism research is not so developed as other service industries.Many theories come from other disciplines,such as customer satisfaction and service quality.It is questionable whether these theories can explain the formation mechanism of tourists’ loyalty.Take tourists’ satisfaction for example,in the first quarter of 2015,the tourist’s satisfaction of some famous travel cities such as Lijiang and Sanya is lower than that of Shijiazhuang and Zhengzhou,which is not famous for tourism.It implies that in tourism the influence of tourists’ satisfaction need to be reconsidered.Tourism is different from other kinds of service industries,even though there are all kinds of services in tourism.These differences make us re-examine the industry and its nature.First,in tourism the service is not necessary.For example,backpackers nearly don’t need service.Second,the objective of tourists is flow experience not the service itself,even though the service influences the experience.Third,the tourism activities happen in destination.From one’s hometown to destination,tourists’ mood changes with the changing of place.So researchers should undoubtedly focus on place.In a word,tourists want different,exotic and pleasant experience.They are attracted by the characteristic of destination and the travel experience leaves them a lot of memories.What’s more,the travel experience comes from the interaction between tourists and destination.So it is necessary to analyze the interaction between tourists and destination to find out the formation mechanism of tourists’loyalty.Based on this reason,this research introduces the Place Theory which is the theory about the interaction between people and place.At the same time,the service is also inevitable in tourism,even though some kinds of tourists need little service.But the number of these tourists is not so large and to many tourists,the service is still necessary.Besides,all of the tourists need public service,such as transportation,map,weather service,public security etc.Almost all of the tourists rely on these public service which was ignored in the past research.There are some questions to answer:what does destination service quality contains?How about its influence on tourists’ loyalty?So this study proposes the following questions:(1)What are the contents of service quality of tourist destination?And how about the effect on tourists’ loyalty?(2)Does the model based on Place Theory and destination service quality be accepted?Considering the popularity of ancient towns and the problems during its development,the research chose a typical ancient town Lijiang as the study case.The study collected 390 cases,which were input in spss16.0 for further research.This research combines exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis.The model was estimated by AMOS22.0.Based on the qualitative analysis,three empirical results were indicated as follows:First,the exploratory factor analysis indicated that four factors were extracted from placeness named natural environment,culture,lifestyle and entertainment.Two factors were extracted from destination service quality named reception service and public service.The researcher also found that tourists pay more attention on culture and lifestyle and the public service is also very important besides reception service.Second,the results of variance analysis showed that the place attachment of tourists staying more than 3days is higher than that of tourists staying less than 3days.But the tourists stay more than 7days don’t have significant higher place attachment.So the destination can design more events to make sure the tourists stay there more than 3 days.Third,based on the results of path analysis the research found the relationship among placeness,destination service quality,place attachment and tourists’ loyalty.The results indicated that the placeness doesn’t have significant direct effect on tourists’ loyalty.And the placeness has significant effect on place attachment.The relationship between place attachment and tourists’ loyalty is significant.The results showed that the Place Theory is very effective on analyzing the tourists’ loyalty.However,this research didn’t find the significant direct relationship between placeness and tourists’ loyalty,which indicated that the emotion other than the characteristic of destination is most important.The destination becomes substitutable because of the emotion.What’s more,the destination service quality has significant influence on place attachment and tourists’ loyalty.It indicates that tourists still pay attention to service quality.The destination service quality is also one of the factors which lead to the tourists’ overall evaluation on destination.The research also proposed some suggestions based on the conclusions,such as protecting the destination’s characteristics and developing the traditional culture.However,the research also has limitations for some reasons,which can be improved in the future.