ANALYSING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN DEMOGRAPHIC CHARACTERISTICS OF ADVENTURE TOURISTS AND THEIR OVERALL SATISFACTION: EVIDENCE FROM RISHIKESH

Abstract

The concept of tourist satisfaction is well established as one of the major motivators of destination competitiveness, destinations loyalty and long-term sustainability. Although a lot of research has been done as regards to the satisfaction in respect to service quality and destination attributes, little has been done with respect to demographics, particularly in the case of adventure tourism. This paper aims at exploring the relationship between demographics of tourists and their general satisfaction in Rishikesh which is a major adventure tourism attraction in India. There were 460 tourists on whom primary data were collected using structured questions. Statistical evaluation (correlation and chi-square tests) was done to evaluate the importance of correlations between the variables of satisfaction and the factors of age, gender, income, education, frequency of visits, traveling alone, transportation, preferred season, adventure excitement, proximity, motivations, and place of residence. Findings indicate that 8 variables such as age, income, gender, frequency of visits, travel companions, preferred season, adventure enthusiasm, and motivations are strongly related to the level of satisfaction whereas education, transportation, proximity and residence are not. These results emphasize the role of population profiling in adventure tourism planning, and they have implications to destination managers, policy makers, and tourism marketers.