Although horse-based tourism is an important and growing sector of the tourism industry, it has not been extensively researched. The findings from the current research project, which involved interviews with owners/operators of horse-based tourism businesses and a survey of their business practices, suggest that they belong to a culture of horsemanship rather than a culture of tourism as business operations in a service industry. The background, interests and outlook of the participants is that of horsemen: that is people involved with the breeding, training and riding of horses. This is also what they expect their guests to be interested in, and a passion they believe to be shared between hosts and guests. The business operation, including finances, insurance and business plans, were topics that the participants seemed less knowledgeable about and less interested in.

The aim of this research was to investigate customer satisfaction and visitor attitudes to several aspects of service quality in equestrian (horse riding) tourism. A survey yielding 2774 responses from visitors in horse rental and horse trekking was conducted. Despite the development of methods for evaluating service quality, methods for measuring it within equestrian businesses are in their initial stage. Using the SERVQUAL model or developing a derivative model for measuring service quality in equestrian businesses might be useful. This research contributes to this discussion by identifying important factors correlating to customer satisfaction in equestrian tourism businesses and by estimating the importance of those factors. The visitor satisfaction reported is high and respondents are near unanimous in their willingness to recommend the business they bought the service from. Visitors in horse rental relate satisfaction with the service to the length and diversity of the trail, the performance and service mindedness of staff and for overseas visitors the facilities for the horses were of importance. In several aspects, a significant difference is found between visitors on horse trekking and in horse rental. Furthermore, a difference can be discerned between domestic and overseas visitor attitudes, indicating the variety of target groups in equestrian tourism. The majority of respondents are female and the percentage of young people is higher among domestic visitors. Word of mouth is an important factor as the proportion of visitors who heard about the products and services from friends and relatives is high.

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