Pacific B usiness R eview I nternational
A Refereed Monthly International Journal of Management Indexed With THOMSON REUTERS(ESCI)
|
Dr. S. Shyam Sundar Sr. Assistant Professor Department of Management Studies SreeVee College Dindigul, Tamil Nadu |
B.L.Saroj M.Phil Research Scholar Thiagaraja College Madurai, Tamil Nadu |
Satisfaction of the tourist is a yardstick to measure the tourist’s positive and negative thought towards tourism destination. The negative thought of tourist influences is associated with tourism industry and tourism service providers. From the tourism service provider’s point of view, it is very important to know why tourists select or not select Madurai and how the tourists think about the place and their trip. Tourists face some problems during their travel or visit. Once the tourists leave their home naturally they may face problems. A person, who visits a tourist destination, desires to relax and enjoy during travel. But during travel, sometimes a tourist may have bitter experience. This paper presents problems of tourists while visiting the Madurai city.
Keywords: Problems of tourists, satisfaction of tourists, tourist motivation.
Madurai offers a variety of products and services to attract tourists. The satisfied tourists only continue their visit unless or otherwise they could cut short the trip and return home. Tourist motivation and satisfaction level is give sustainable tourism development to the destination. Expectation fulfilment and satisfaction act as the deciding factors for the tourists’ frequent visit. A tourist plans to visit again a particular place means, they are satisfied in their previous visit. Satisfaction speaks the quality of the composite tourism product and services of the destination. There is always an inter-relationship between satisfaction of the present visit and one’s future visit. A large amount research in tourism studies gazes at the problem of tourism industry and less attention has been given to the problems of tourist. Hence, the present study deals the problems of tourists while visiting the Madurai city
OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY
1. To analyze the tourists problems while visiting Madurai
2. To assess the level of satisfaction of the tourists over service providers.
The primary objective of this empirical paper is to find out the tourists purpose of visit to Madurai. The study is based on both primary and secondary data. Madurai was selected as the area of the study because of the Madurai is a land of magnificent temples that remain intact exposing the marvel and glory of the Dravidian art, culture, architecture and customs. For data collection, disproportionate stratified random sampling technique has been used. The numbers of tourists visited into Madurai and the various tourist places in and around Madurai has identified by the researcher .Hence, the details have collected from Madurai tourist office. From the record, 10 years average of tourist arrival into Madurai is 1035189. Based on it, the sample size is fixed by the researcher. According to the Rao’s soft online sample size calculator at 5 per cent significance level of the proposed size sample has been derived as 385 tourists s from the population of 1035189.
Before analysing the data provided by the samples, it is advisable to obtain some insights into the demographic characteristics of respondents participating in this study since it provides a background for the analysis .Only a few demographic characteristics such as gender, age, marital status, education, and religion were used in this study, all of which were expected to be important in the interpretation of the results.
TABLE: 1
DEMOGRAPHIC PROFILE OF THE RESPONDENTS (n = 385)
|
CHARACTERISTICS |
CATEGORY |
FREQUENCY |
PERCENTAGE |
|
Gender |
Male Female |
247 138 |
64.2 35.8 |
|
Age |
Below 20 20-35 35-50 50-65 Above 65 |
34 83 107 88 73 |
8.8 21.6 27.8 22.8 19.0 |
|
Educational Qualification |
Illiterate Upto 12th std Graduate Professionals |
48 126 122 89 |
12.5 32.7 31.7 23.1 |
|
Marital Status |
Married Unmarried Widower Widow |
219 87 36 43 |
56.8 22.6 9.4 11.2 |
|
Religion |
Hindu Christian Muslim Jain |
295 65 14 11 |
76.6 16.9 3.6 2.9 |
Source: Primary Data
The sample consisted of slightly more male respondents (64.2%) as compared to female respondents (35.83%). Respondents spanned the range of age categories tourists who belong to below 25 and above 65 are less in percentage because they may be students and age old group respectively. Respondents who belong to above 20 and below 65 are more in percentages..Respondents were also asked to provide information regarding their education, about 32.7 per cent of them are completed school level education. The analysis revealed that majority (56.8 percent) of the respondents belongs to the married group. It is clear from the Table that majority (76.6 percent) of the respondents are Hindus.
PROBLEMS FACED BY THE TOURISTS WHILE VISITING MADURAI
Tourists face some problems during their travel or visit. Once the tourists leave their home naturally they may face problems. A person, who visits a tourist destination, desires to relax and enjoy during travel. But during travel, sometimes a tourist may have bitter experience. The Table shows an overview of tourists problems such as lack of diversity of attractions, only a few destinations having the potential to attract, lack of advertisement/ publicity on tourist destination, high prices, unfriendly tourism culture, lack of cultural and recreation programmes, limited shopping facilities and so on. In order to assess the intensity of the problem faced by the respondents the Mann- Whitney ‘U’ test has been utilized.
It is a non-parametric test which is used to determine whether two independent samples have been drawn from population with same distribution. This test is also known as ‘U’ test. This helps to determine whether the two samples male and female have come from identical population. If it is true that the samples have come from the same population, it is reasonable to assume that the means of ranks assigned to the values of two samples are more or less the same.
Calculation of ‘U’ statistic is used to test the difference between the rank sums.
n1 (n1+1)
U= n1n2+-------------- - R1
2
Here, the null hypothesis is that there is no relationship between the gender and the problems faced by the respondents.
TABLE: 2
PROBLEMS FACED BY THE TOURISTS DURING THE VISIT TO MADURAI
|
Sl.No. |
Particulars |
Grouping Variable |
N |
Mean Rank |
U value |
Z |
Significant Value at 0.05 |
Result |
|
1 |
Lack of diversity of attractions |
Male Female Total |
247 138 385 |
202.66 175.71 |
14657.5 |
-2.438 |
.015 |
Significant |
|
2 |
Only a few destinations have potential to attract |
Male Female Total |
247 138 385 |
216.67 150.63 |
11196.5 |
-5.841 |
.000 |
Significant |
|
3 |
Lack of advertisement/ Publicity on tourist destination |
Male Female Total |
247 138 385 |
193.26 192.53 |
16978.5 |
-.064 |
.949 |
Not Significant |
|
4 |
Prices are generally too high |
Male Female Total |
247 138 385 |
195.59 188.36 |
16402.5 |
-.650 |
.516 |
Not Significant |
|
5 |
Unfriendly tourism culture |
Male Female Total |
247 138 385 |
192.06 194.68 |
16810.5 |
-.239 |
.811 |
Not Significant |
|
6 |
Lack of cultural and recreation programmes |
Male Female Total |
247 138 385 |
196.62 186.53 |
16150.0 |
-.911 |
.362 |
Not Significant |
|
7 |
Limited shopping facilities |
Male Female Total |
247 138 385 |
197.79 184.42 |
15859.5 |
-1.170 |
.242 |
Not Significant |
|
8 |
Over crowed in tourist places |
Male Female Total |
247 138 385 |
186.97 203.79 |
15554.5 |
-1.498 |
.134 |
Not Significant |
|
9 |
Poor maintenance and management of tourist |
Male Female Total |
247 138 385 |
185.49 206.43 |
15189.0 |
-1.926 |
.054 |
Not Significant |
|
10 |
Insufficient parking facilities |
Male Female Total |
247 138 385 |
195.19 189.08 |
16502.0 |
-.644 |
.519 |
Not Significant |
|
11 |
Insufficient of tourist guide |
Male Female Total |
247 138 385 |
182.96 210.97 |
14563.5 |
-2.512 |
.012 |
Significant |
|
12 |
Poor public utility services |
Male Female Total |
247 138 385 |
190.43 197.60 |
16408.0 |
-.660 |
.509 |
Not Significant |
|
13 |
Poor attitude of secondary service supporters |
Male Female Total |
247 138 385 |
193.85 191.48 |
16833.0 |
-.205 |
.837 |
Not Significant |
|
14 |
Lack of safety and security environment |
Male Female Total |
247 138 385 |
195.75 188.08 |
16364.5 |
-.678 |
.498 |
Not Significant |
|
15 |
Brochures/information are not available in regional languages |
Male Female Total |
247 138 385 |
181.45 213.67 |
14191.0 |
-3.152 |
.002 |
Significant |
|
16 |
Tollgate fees |
Male Female Total |
247 138 385 |
190.96 196.65 |
16539.0 |
-.580 |
.562 |
Not Significant |
|
17 |
Prohibition of cameras |
Male Female Total |
247 138 385 |
198.02 184.02 |
15804.0 |
-1.293 |
.196 |
Not Significant |
|
18 |
Generally unhealthy conditions |
Male Female Total |
247 138 385 |
194.15 190.94 |
16759.0 |
-.282 |
.778 |
Not Significant |
Source: Primary Data
The Table 2 shows the outcome of the analysis. It is noted that out of 18 factors, the null hypothesis is rejected for four variables namely lack of diversity of attractions, only a few destinations have the potential to attract , insufficient tourist guide and brochures/information are not available in regional languages. The calculated value for these four is less than the P value of 0.05. For the remaining variables, the null hypothesis is accepted. The calculated value for these 14 variables is more than the P value. So, it is concluded that both the male and female respondents have faced problems like lack of diversity of attractions, only a few destinations have the potential to attract, insufficient tourist guide and unavailability of brochures.
ASSOCIATION BETWEEN GENDER AND LEVEL OF SATISFACTION OF THE RESPONDENTS OVER SERVICE PROVIDERS - CHI SQUARE TEST
Satisfaction of the tourists is the most important aspect in tourism and hospitality, It plays a great role in it, it is not only for the survival of tourism business but it also earns a good name for the destination and creates tourist demand for the particular destination; The dissatisfaction of tourists may lead to downfall of the particular destination as a tourist spot. So tourist satisfaction level speaks for the tourist product quality. Tourist service providers play a vital role in offering tourist satisfaction. Without the support of these intermediaries a tourist cannot enjoy the trip. In order to find the out tourist level of satisfaction towards services providers, chi-square test has been used. The chi-square test is one of the simplest and most widely used non-parametric tests. Out of all the personal factors, gender plays an essential role in the selection of tourist destination.
To test the association between gender and opinion about the level satisfaction of service providers services, Chi-square is used by taking opinion as dependent factor and gender of the respondents as independent factor. Thus the levels of satisfaction of the respondents are measured through ordinary scale and their gender is measured as categorical scale. The null hypothesis is that, there is no association between gender and level of satisfaction of respondents towards service providers.
TABLE: 3
GENDER AND THE LEVEL OF SATISFACTION OF THE RESPONDENTS TOWARDS SERVICE PROVIDERS
|
Gender |
Level of Satisfaction |
Total |
Chi-square value |
P Value |
Remarks |
||
|
Low |
Medium |
High |
|||||
|
Male |
54 |
140 |
53 |
247 |
10.319 |
.006 |
Significant |
|
Female |
13 |
85 |
40 |
138 |
|||
|
Total |
67 |
225 |
93 |
385 |
|||
Source: Primary Data
The Table shows the significant association between gender and level of satisfaction towards the service providers in the study area of Madurai. From the chi-square test it is learnt that a significant level of 0.006(P value) has been obtained. Hence, the null hypothesis is rejected at 5 per cent level of significance and there is association between gender and level of satisfaction towards service providers. Moreover, female tourist expect more than their counterparts.
The tourism service provider’s main responsibility is to provide recreational facilities, accommodation facilities, hygienic and healthy food availability, short travel transportation and some other amenities like currency exchange, guide facilities, shopping facility and safety provisions. Mainly the recreational facilities and safety conditions promote the stay of the tourists. Expectation fulfilment and satisfaction act as the deciding factors for the tourists’ frequent visit. Tourists’ expectations are unlimited. When their expectations are fulfilled, the travel and tourism reputation will be increased in the tourist destination.
1. S.P.Gupta, M.P.Gupta, “Business Statistics”, Sultan Chand and Sons Publishers, New Delhi, 2014, P.543.
2. http.vmou.ac.in
3. http.bieap.gov.in
4. http.vmou.ac.in