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Mathematical statistics

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Stochastic processes --- Mathématiques appliquées --- Toegepaste wiskunde --- 519.233.3 --- Academic collection --- #KUPV:Eekhoutcentrum --- #WBIB:dd.Lic.L.De Busschere --- Hypothesis testing. Criteria. Discrimination --- 519.233.3 Hypothesis testing. Criteria. Discrimination

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Theses

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The global increase of income and leisure time, the improved educational levels, the progressive decrease of travel costs and the consequent 'democratization' of travels have encouraged more and more cities to enter the tourism market. However, while opportunities to attract tourists seem to be increasing, time remains a limited resource and competition to attract tourists stays fierce. Understanding what determines tourism satisfaction can be particularly useful for both policy makers and destination marketers. Satisfaction is indeed a necessary condition to ensure repeat visitation or, at least, positive word-of-mouth. Getting a better insight on these topics can therefore be extremely useful to understand whether cities are positioning themselves competitively in the tourism market. In the last 20 years, tourism has become an integral part of the so called 'experience economy': for the holidaymaker, the tourism experience is of high personal value and is accompanied with satisfying and pleasurable emotions. The destination's 'basic' offerings (e.g. accommodation, information services) are not sufficient anymore at fully satisfying tourists. Emotional reactions to the tourism experience are fundamental determinants of satisfaction and post-consumption behaviors such as willingness to come back and intention to recommend. Apart from some exceptions, however, research on the experiential dimensions of the tourism offerings remains largely underexplored. Academic authors have mainly focused on satisfaction with 'physical' destination attributes, with little evidence being available about 'immaterial' factors affecting tourists' satisfaction. This thesis wants address the following research questions: what does determine visitor satisfaction in a tourism destination? Is the emotional dimension of a tourism destination a signification determinant of visitor satisfaction? The city of Mons was chosen to empirically answer these questions. Mons - a medium size city, counting around 95,000 inhabitants and located in a former industrial region in Belgium ('Le Centre' - is the European Capital of Culture (ECoC) 2015. As part of Mons 2015, a new tourism strategy was devised aiming at boosting both cultural and business tourism. This strategy wants to build on the potential echo of this mega-event to attract at least 500,000 visitors by 2015, compared to 250,000 in 2011. The modelling strategy used in this thesis draws on Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) with the objective to explore the relationships between four constructs, namely: perceived emotional quality, perceived quality of the destination's offerings, overall satisfaction and post-consumption behavior. The model was tested on a sample of 297 visitors selected randomly at major tourist locations in Mons from January until June 2015. The results confirm that both the perceived quality of the destination's offerings and perceived quality of the emotional experience are significant predictors of visitor satisfaction, with a stronger effect of 'emotional quality'. The parameter estimate for the relationship between visitor satisfaction and post consumption behavior is also strong and positive. However, we have to reject the hypothesis according to which the perceived emotional and functional quality would impact on destination loyalty.