The Influence of Destination Image on Tourist Satisfaction and Tourist Loyalty: A Case Study of Urban Tourism in Semarang
Glori Puteri Maharani Agung, Serli Wijaya, Deborah Christine Widjaja
Faculty of Business and Economics
Petra Christian University
Jalan Siwalankerto 121-131 Surabaya, East Java
Abstract
Urban tourism has gained its popularity as an alternative tourism product that takes place in cities offering various tourism experiences not only for the visitors but also for the city residents. Semarang has evolved as one of the major urban tourism destinations in Indonesia showing an increasing visitor arrivals every year. The city has a wide range of tourism potential attractions including heritage tourism, religious tourism, shopping tourism at traditional markets, and culinary tourism. Despite its prospective tourism growth and extensive efforts of the local government to promote the destination, the number of tourists who visit Semarang is still behind its neighbouring cities like Yogyakarta and Solo. This study aimed to identify the image of Semarang as a tourism destination and to examine whether both cognitive and affective images of the city affected tourist satisfaction and tourist loyalty. The survey was undertaken to 300 respondents who were domestic tourists not residing in Semarang and had ever visited the city at least within the past year. The results showed that destination image significantly and positively influenced tourist satisfaction and induced the intention of tourists to revisit Semarang, with cognitive image had a stronger effect than affective image.
Keywords: Cognitive image, affective image, tourist satisfaction, and tourist loyalty
Topic: Marketing