Competitiveness factors influencing tourists’ intention to return and recommend: evidence from a distressed destination

ABSTRACT

Assessing destination competitiveness from a tourist perspective has been limited, especially for distressed destinations such as Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe has been facing ongoing political and economic challenges for more than two decades which puts pressure on the growth of the tourism industry. However, all destinations compete in the same space for tourists’ attention, forcing marketers to continuously develop strategies to enhance competitiveness and increase tourist returns and recommendations. This paper focuses on identifying competitiveness factors that influence tourists’ intention to return and recommend. Based on a sample of 450 international tourists to Zimbabwe, results show that unique to a distressed destination, the residents’ hospitality and friendliness is the most important predictor for the intention to return. This emphasises the role of residents in making the destination more competitive and attractive. General amenities, attractions and destination management are also significant predictors of return intentions. Tourists' intentions to recommend are largely predicted by the destination's resources. Encouraging visitors to revisit and recommend can assist a distressed destination in increasing visitor numbers on a limited marketing budget. Understanding these factors could also help managers to improve the negative image of the destination.

KEYWORDS:

• Destination competitiveness
• tourist destination
• intention to return
• intention to recommend
• distressed destination
• Zimbabwe

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank the three anonymous reviewers and editor for valuable comments and suggestions on earlier drafts.

Authors' contributions

Erisher Woyo: Conceptualization, Methodology, Investigation, data analysis, Writing original and review drafts.

Elmarie Slabbert: Supervision, data analysis, writing, reviewing drafts and editing.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.

Notes on contributors

Erisher Woyo

Erisher Woyo is an Extraordinary Research Scientist at the Tourism Research in Economic Environs & Society Unit at North-West University, Potchefstroom, South Africa. He also serves as the MBA Programme Coordinator at the Namibia Business School, University of Namibia. His ongoing work focuses on travel behaviour, destination competitiveness, tourism in distressed economies, ICT and higher education. His work has been published in Anatolia, Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Insights, Journal of Marketing for Higher education, Development Southern Africa, and several other outlets. For more information, http://www.drwoyo.com.

Elmarie Slabbert

Elmarie Slabbert is a Professor in Tourism Management at the School of Tourism Management, North-West University (South Africa). Elmarie is the chairperson of the Southern African Institute for Management Scientists and deputy-chairperson of the Tourism Educators of South Africa. Her research interests focuses on travel behaviour, the socio-cultural impact of tourism and marketing issues. She has published her work in Development Southern Africa, Anatolia, Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Insights, Journal of Destination Marketing & Management, Tourism and Hospitality Research and Tourism Recreation Research among several outlets.