Assessment of Destination’s Tourism Offering in the Off-Season

Abstract

Purpose -This paper presents tourist attitudes regarding the off-season tourism offering of Rijeka and the Opatija Riviera, a seaside destination hosting about 2.2 million overnight stays per year. Since more than 54% of these stays are concentrated in the summer season, the destination is facing an issue of high seasonality. Therefore, an active approach is required that would result in higher tourist satisfaction in the off-season and bring about seasonality smoothing. Thus, the primary purpose of this study was to examine tourist perceptions of the tourism offering in the off-season with an emphasis on identifying the critical destination attributes that need to be improved. In that context, creative approach in creating tourism offering should be taken in terms of more appealing and innovative but still authentic tourism products. Design -A tourist on-site survey was conducted from January to May 2016. The assessment was carried out on a sample of 358 tourists who visited this destination. Methodology -Descriptive statistical analysis was performed on the socioeconomic, demographic and travel-related characteristic variables to obtain frequencies. T-test was performed to find out whether there are any significant differences between importance and satisfaction levels for each of the 22 attributes. IPA was performed to identify the critical performance factors that need to be addressed. Findings -T-test results confirmed that the majority of attributes of the destination offering (19 out of 22 attributes) have statistically significant negative gap scores indicating that satisfaction with those attributes is less than their importance to the respondents. IPA analysis produced fairly clear implications for management in the case of Rijeka and the Opatija Riviera in the offseason. Originality of the research -In this field of research, the novelty lies in investigating satisfaction with a variety of attributes of Rijeka and the Opatija Riviera's offering during the off-season.

Visitor Satisfaction with a Public Green Infrastructure and Urban Nature Space in Perth, Western Australia

“…The GA-IPA was completed by determining the differences between the performance and importance rankings (i.e., Gap = Performance − Importance) by each participant for each attribute, checking that the performance gaps for all participants approximated a normal distribution for each attribute, calculating the mean of the gaps for each PGI attribute, and checking if the mean gap for all responses was significantly different from zero (i.e., Performance = Importance) using a one sample t-Test [22,23,27]. Consistent with to the approach of Smolčić Jurdana et al [24][25][26] and Taplin [27], this study presents both the IPA grid for the DC-IPA and the GA-IPA on the same figure provided in the Results. The greater the gap in the performance of an attribute, which is represented by its distance from the line of parity (Performance = Importance) in the graphical representation, the higher the management priority to implement corrective action [18,22].…”

“…A number of techniques may be utilized when interrogating the collected information as described above, pursuant to improving on-ground management of urban PGI. While techniques of Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA) are widely applied to determine how well the attributes of a good or service perform in meeting the expectations of consumers, clients, users, and visitors (e.g., [18,[20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27], IPA has only rarely been applied to enhancing PGI management [18,28]. The literature review of Parker and Simpson [28,29] and additional research in support of this case study, identified only four other studies that have utilized IPA techniques to investigate how PGI users perceive urban PGI spaces [30][31][32][33].…”

Importance-performance analysis to inform visitor management at marine wildlife tourism destinations

“…an ecotourism experience) meet the expectations of visitors (Smol ci c Jurdana and Soldi c Frleta, 2011;Soldi c Frleta, 2014;Sá nchez-Rebull et al, 2018). Visitors who are satisfied with their wildlife tourism experience are more likely to re-visit or recommend the experience to family or friends through word of mouth and, evermore commonly, through online platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and TripAdvisor (Gier et al, 2017;Smol ci c Jurdana et al, 2017;Prakash et al, 2019;Patroni et al, 2019). Satisfied visitors are essential for the future viability of an ecotourism operation/experience, because the income from tourists is vital for funding the operation, and having satisfied visitors can make these experiences more ecologically, economically and socially sustainable (Wilson and Tisdell, 2003;Schleimer et al, 2015;Patroni et al, 2019).…”

“…The importance of visitor satisfaction for the ecotourism industry, within which wildlife tourism is a niche market segment, is summarised by Newsome et al (2013, p. 23) who wrote “Satisfaction of visitors with the ecotourism experience is essential to the long-term viability of the ecotourism industry […] and satisfaction should be second only to the conservation and protection of the resources on which tourism is based.” Visitor satisfaction is a measure of how well the attributes of a product or service (i.e. an ecotourism experience) meet the expectations of visitors (Smolčić Jurdana and Soldić Frleta, 2011; Soldić Frleta, 2014; Sánchez-Rebull et al , 2018). Visitors who are satisfied with their wildlife tourism experience are more likely to re-visit or recommend the experience to family or friends through word of mouth and, evermore commonly, through online platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and TripAdvisor (Gier et al , 2017; Smolčić Jurdana et al , 2017; Prakash et al , 2019; Patroni et al , 2019).…”