Tourists-perceived service quality and satisfaction of sustainable tourism in Ethiopia

Abstract

For the economic development tourism plays a great role for countries like Ethiopia. As international tourism continues to grow from time to time, it is necessary to maintain the tourism sector for generations. As a result, sustainable tourism becomes the best tool to achieve the goal. The purpose of this study is to measure the sustainable tourism management with regard to tourists’ satisfaction or dissatisfaction of the service they get while they staying in Ethiopia. The study has used the gap model of service quality with the application of the SERVQUAL instrument. The five dimensions of SERVQUAL, namely responsiveness and assurance, reliability, empathy, resource and corporate image and tangibility were used to measure tourists’ expectations and perceptions regarding the tourism. A total of 203 respondents who have prior experience were selected with a non-probabilistic convenience sampling technique. Findings show that the reliability dimension scored high in terms of customer expectation and in determining customers’ satisfaction. Finally, the study concludes that tourists' expectations of sustainable tourism have exceeded their perceptions.