Tourism service quality and tourist re-visit intention to Sri Lanka: a mediating role of brand image.

Abstract

Sri Lanka’s tourism sector contributes to the economy and Gross Domestic Production heavily with the assistance of the government. There were 2.3 million arrivals in 2018 and was an increase compared to the year 2017. While the growth of the tourism sectors in Sri Lanka, the tourists arrivals require that the revisit intention of the tourists need to be ensured in order to help strategize tourism marketing. Therefore, this study attempted to identify the impact of service quality dimensions on the revisit intention to Sri Lanka of tourists mediating through loyalty of tourists. Thus, the objective of the study was to investigate the impact of service quality dimensions related to service clusters of tourism of Sri Lanka comprising hotel services, airline services and transport services on the creation of revisit intention of tourists. The other objective was to examine the role of brand image between service quality and tourists’ revisit intention. International tourists who were in tourists’ attractions in Sri Lanka were the respondents for this study. Since the research approach was deductive and research strategy was survey, self-administered questionnaire was used to collect data. 350 questionnaires were issued, researchers retained only 268 for the analysis. SMARTPLS was used to analyze hypothesized relationship of the model. Findings indicate that assurance, tangible, reliability, empathy and responsiveness are supporting to the creation of destination image and that is positively impacting the tourists’ revisit intention to Sri Lanka. Destination image is really created with physical environment and characteristics of the people who work in the tourism service sectors. It was also found that all five dimension of service quality of Sri Lanka tourism significantly and positively impact on the revisit intention Sri Lanka of tourists. Further, it was also found that destination brand image fully mediates the association between service quality and revisit intention of tourists visiting Sri Lanka.