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Perception of tourists towards India as a Preferred Tourist Destination An Empirical Research

Prof. Dr. Bernadette DSilva* and Prof. Dr. Stephen DSilva** Introduction Tourism is critical to India. It provides substantial foreign exchange and jobs. Tourism plays an extremely important role in the Indian economy. India has the potential to become the number one tourist destination in the world with the demand growing at 10.1 per cent per annum as predicted by the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC). Indian people are known for being friendly and warm. Understanding and fulfilling needs of global tourists for quality vacationing is the kick-off for creditable performance and strong impact of India's economic growth on Tourism. Many factors have been collectively responsible for boosting our country's economic reserves and the impact of India's economic growth on tourism is increasingly being felt in niche sectors. The purpose of this study was to examine the genuine needs of foreign tourists by identifying their perceptions and levels of satisfaction with the services and facilities (attributes) provided by the Indian tourism industry. Specifically the study was aimed to address the following objectives: (1) To identify the relative factors being considered as vital by the tourists when it comes to choosing India as a tourist destination. (2) To understand the various demographic features among the tourists and their different needs. (3) To identify the priority list of the people touring any place in the World. Literature Review Customer satisfaction Tourist choice behaviour is one of the most needed studies by many tourist managers1. Tourists take into account the various factors in terms of facilities, local attractions etc, before choosing their destination.2 Local attractions, accessibility, facilities are some of the factors that generate tourist flow to a particular location. Absence of any of these facilities may deter the tourists from travelling to enjoy the attractions of India. There are many foreign studies which analyse the foreign tourist destination inorder to form a policy for decision making of tourist destination in the country. Hunt in 1975 has analysed the image of tourists as well as their behavioral perceptions.3 Some studies have found out the attractiveness of a tourist destination on the basis of attribute analysis of a destination.4 One should take into account the total ideas, impressions and beliefs a tourist has of the tourist destination.5 Many factors measuring customer satisfaction is an integral part of the effort that improves a products / service quality which results in a countrys competitive advantage.6,7 Many researchers analysed on customer satisfaction which results in repeat visit, and favorable word-of-mouth publicity8.9 The theory of consumer behavior for a service sector points out that customers buying behavior and levels of satisfaction are influenced by the customers background, characteristics and external stimuli. Customers satisfaction is influenced by the availability of various customer services; the quality of customer service has become a major concern of all business. Failure to pay attention to influential attributes in choice intention may result in a customers negative evaluation, and may lead to unfavourable word-of-mouth.10 Tourist destination Researches on tourist destination by many researchers have focused on the relationship between satisfaction of the customer as well as the quality of their various services. Services have various features like intangibility, inseparability, variability and perishability11. An attractiveness of a tourist destination can be viewed as consisting of unique local features, cultural attributes, natural resources, infrastructure, services and others 12.The tourism product can be analyzed in terms of attraction, facilities and accessibility 13 for the purpose of finding out its attractiveness. Attractions are the major factors, which ensure the flow of international tourists to a specific place. The tourist facilities are those elements in tourist product, which do not normally themselves provide the motivation for tourist flows. But the absence of these facilities may deter the tourists from travelling to enjoy the attractions. Accessibility relates to the mode of transportation to the destination chosen by tourist and is best interpreted in terms of time and cost to reach the destination. Some researchers analysed the attractiveness of a tourist destination on the basis of attribute analysis of a destination.14
*Director, Guru Nanak Institute of Management Studies, Mumbai. bernadette.dsilva@gmail.com ** Asst. Professor, Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies, Mumbai. st.dsilva@gmail.com

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Methodology The instrument The data collection started with a brain storming session among the researchers wherein they recollected their experiences as a tourist, identified certain critical factors that influenced their decision when it came to selecting a tourist destination. Additionally the discussion also brought certain of the issues that in the opinion of the researchers needed to be addressed on an immediate basis to put India as a preferred tourist destination. Thus the discussion delved on certain initial assumptions that were thought to be proved for their validity as a part of this research. A self administered questionnaire was finally developed based on relevant studies and brainstorming of the researchers. The questionnaire comprised of two sections. The first was designed to understand the decisional framework guiding the selection of India as a tourist destination. The questionnaire then also attempts to understand if India has a distinctive advantage over the other tourist countries of the Asian continent. This part of the questionnaire aims to get realistic views of people touring India. Respondents are being asked to specify their degree of agreement to the concise statements, which were being formulated taking into account different tourism related aspects of India. The main aspects being covered by the questions are Indian culture, beautiful cities, Indian festivals, art forms. Respondents were asked to rate various factors to measure their perceptions in relation to each of the 33 attributes, on a five point Likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree ) to 5 ( strongly agree). The second part of the questionnaire consists of questions which gives feedback on factors that can be of tremendous usefulness in designing a strategy for the future. The questions identify 14 most critical factors, which find reference in the priority list of the people touring any place any where in the World. These factors serve as the first contact points, which by and large shape the opinion of the tourist about the destination. The factors referred above are transportation, personal safety, cleanliness etc. The questionnaire asks the respondents to rank these attributes in the order of the increasing importance with 1 being the least important & 5 being the most important. The third part of the questionnaire is being inserted to understand the demographic characteristics of the respondents. For testing the reliability of questionnaire, Cronbachs Alpha test was performed after administering the test to thirty (n =35) respondents. The value of Cronbachs Alpha of the questionnaire came out to be 0.77, which may be considered as reliable (Nunnaly, 1978). The sample In this study, the target sample surveyed included those international travelers/ foreigners who were presently tourists in India. A foreign tourist is a person who is a temporary visitor, possessing a fixed place of abode, travelling in the expectation of business or pleasure and staying in India for a temporary period of time.15 The sampling procedure Using a convenience sampling approach, foreign tourists visiting Gateway of India in Mumbai, Taj Mahal in Agra, Baga Beach in Goa, and Jaiselmer in Rajasthan was surveyed. The sample size in this study contained 340 respondents over a six month period. Data analysis Data collected from the questionnaires was analysed using factor analysis. The 33 attributes in relation to the tourists perception of India as a tourist destination were factor analysed to determine whether there existed the underlying dimensions or factors as well as 14 attributes with respect to their importance on various factors when touring were analysed. Principal Component Factor Analysis methodology with varimax rotation was used to: summarize the information contained in the original attributes (variables) into smaller sets of newly correlated composite dimensions. Results Demographic profiles of the respondents Of the 350 respondents who were asked to fill the questionnaire during the months of September 2007 to February 2008, 340 were found to be usable in this study, representing a response rate of 97 percent. The
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rest were incomplete. Out of 340 respondents, nearly 69 percent were male; 60 percent were married, 98 percent were aged between 20 and 50, nearly 48 percent were post graduates, 48 percent were College students; 3 percent were High School; 1 percent was Junior College Student. The result also suggested that 15 percent of the respondents held a professional position; 30 percent a Senior Executive position; 29 percent held Junior Executive position; 3 percent were Entrepreneurs; 4 percent were students. Factor Analysis: Part 1: A factor analysis of all independent variables pertaining to the expectation of tourists on key attributes and support services was conducted in order to reduce the number of items into a manageable number of factors. A varimax rotated principal component analysis was used on 33 items for a sample of 340 international tourists. Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin statistics of 0.694 and Bartletts test of Sphericity statistics of 1313.513 indicated that the data was suitable for conducting factor analysis (Norusis/SPSS Inc., 1988). A ten-factor solution was obtained on the basis of minimum eigenvalue of one and the interpretability of the solution. These factors cumulatively explained 72.111 percent of the variance in the original data set. Factor 1 was labeled as Outdoor Activities which consisted of four items namely Can enjoy fishing, Can enjoy camel racing, Can enjoy racing, Can enjoy Scuba diving. This factor explains 25.74 percent of the variance in the data with an eigenvalue of 8.49. the items associated with this factor deal with the outdoor activities which foreign tourists like ( = 0.8153). Factor 2 was termed as Natural Beauty accounting for 9.976 percent of the variance with an eigenvalue of 3.292, this factor is loaded with four items with relation to natural beauty. The items are namely Wilderness and Nature, Desert Sceneries, Relaxing Atmosphere, Can enjoy Camping. ( = 0.7032) Factor 3 ( = 0.7188) was named as Culture and Tradition consisting of four items namely Cultural Diversity, Interesting Traditional Hospitality, Interesting Traditional Local Market, Appealing Local Cuisine .This factor accounts for 6.59 percent of the variance with an eigenvalue of 2.17. Factor 4 with an eigenvalue of 1.99 and 6.04 percent of the variance is called Cultural Diversity was classified into four activities namely India has a unique culture, Wonderful Cultural traditions, Interesting Local crafts and Jewellery, Cultural Diversity ( = 0.71530). Factor 5 was labeled as Historic sites which accounted for 5.10 percent of the variance and 1.68 eigenvalue. This factor consisted of two activities viz. Good Historic Site Authentic (original) Historic sites ( = 0.7814). Factor 6 reveals how tourists perceive India consisting of Beautiful places which consisted ofBeautiful cities and Towns. This factor accounted for 4.47 percent of the variance with 1.47 eigenvalue. Factor 7 was labeled as Nature which included Interesting Natural Wonder. This factor accounted for 4.10 percent of the variance with an eigenvalue of 1.35. Factor 8 with an eigenvalue of 1.17, this factor explains 3.55 percent of the variance. This factor mainly talks of Places of Worship which included Pleasant winter climate and Enjoy seeing places of worship. ( = 0.5321). Factor 9 loaded with one item displayed Rural Life describing the Interesting rural life, explains 3.38 percent of the variance and has an eigenvalue of 1.117. Factor 10 was labeled as Outdoor Activities describing the activity Can enjoy camping.This factor accounts for 3.146 percent of the variance with an eigenvalue of 1.03. The ten conceptually meaningful domains from factor analysis were then tested for reliability, which was assessed by Cronbachs Alpha coefficients. The coefficients ranged from a high (0.8153) to a low value (0.5321) indicating that the variables displayed moderate correlation with their factor groupings and thus may be cautiously regarded as internally consistent and stable (Table 1). Part 2: Overall Attributes of Importance : Analysis A factor analysis of all independent variables pertaining to the importance given by the foreign tourists when they are touring any place in the world. A varimax rotated principal component analysis was used on 14 items for a sample of 340 international tourists. Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin statistics of 0.80 and Bartletts test of Sphericity statistics of 552.62 indicated that the data was suitable for conducting factor analysis (Norusis/SPSS Inc., 1988).
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A three-factor solution was obtained on the basis of minimum eigenvalue of one and the interpretability of the solution. These factors cumulatively explained 61.124 percent of the variance in the original data set. Factor 1 was labeled as People and environmental experiences which consisted of six items namely,Safety, friendliness of people, Natural Attraction, Diverse Geography Variety of experiences, Cuisine. This factor explains 37.68 percent of the variance in the data with an eigenvalue of 5.273. The items associated with this factor deal with the basic experiences which the foreign tourists find important ( = 0.8159). Factor 2 was named Basic essentials which consisted of five items namely, Personal safety, Cleanliness, Restaurant Services Sign Boards for Tourists. These consist of the basic amenities that the tourists need whenever they are on tour in any part of the world. This factor explains 16.07 percent of the variance in the data with an eigenvalue of 2.25 ( = 0.8291). Factor 3 was labeled as Infrastructure which consisted of four items namely, Transportation, Accommodation, Personal Safety again, Entertainment. The infrastructural aspects are also very important to a tourist. This factor explains 7.36 percent of the variance in the data with an eigenvalue of 1.03 ( = 0.7422). Discussion and Managerial Implications By identifying the various factors, this study contributed to a greater understanding of the factors and benefits that were perceived by foreign tourists, that are collectively responsible for boosting our country's economic reserves and its impact of India's economic growth on tourism. From the first factor analysis, the data obtained from the respondents showed the perceived attractiveness depends on ten factors of touristic attributes out of thirty three attributes. The main aspects, which have been highlighted for India being considered as an important holiday destination, are Outdoor Activities, Natural Beauty, Culture and Tradition, Diversity in culture, Historic Sites, Places of worship, Beautiful cities and places, Rural life. The factor analysis of second set of data on the various factors looked for by tourists on their holiday, to identify the priority list of the people touring any place in the world, showed that the three factors out of fourteen attributes cumulatively explained 61.124 percent of the variance in the original data set. The important attributes for tourists are People and environmental experiences, Basic essentials and Infrastructure. India is well known for personal bonding and relations with their tourist customers. What will be promising for India is the effectiveness of proactive relationship building strategies undertaken by India. India should focus on building and maintaining strong tourists relationships should note that the selection and training of tour guides who are directly dealing with the tourists. Accordingly, the holiday destination managers may undertake certain measures to improve the status of the dominant factors, which will ultimately lead to the improvement in visitors perception towards India as a tourist destination. Hence expertise and communication, and familiarity with tourists are the most effective relationship-building strategies. The next most effective strategy is for India is to make investments in generating relationship-based benefits with tourists; furthermore, relationship investment has the added benefit of influencing performance directly. However, India must recognize that these proactive efforts will be wasted if they leave tourist conflict unresolved as the negative influence of conflict on customer relationships is greater in magnitude than any other strategy. Thus, the Indian Tourism industry could generate higher returns by reallocating their relationship investments. Competition is increasing over the years . Second and third world countries are rapidly developingand many are becoming Brand savvy. Thus, the necessity of having the advantages of a powerful, well-managed Nation Brand will be exponentially more vital over the coming decades. As the world market continues to deregulate, Brand building skills diffuse across markets and societies, and competitive levels increase, only nations with strong Brands (both internally and externally) will be able to achieve and sustain leadership positions. This reality is where skillfully designed second world nations (especially from Asia) will have an opportunity to overtake current first world nations or, at least, dominate desired niches. This study represents a step toward better understanding of the development of India in the relationship between tourist industry and the foreign tourists. Another area for investigation would be to conduct a longitudinal study to determine how tourism can be developed over time. This research is only a tip of the iceberg. It would be interesting to evaluate how tourism has changed over time. This research will immensely benefit the Indian destination managers for the purpose of formulating effective tourism
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packages, which will address the expectations, needs and concerns of tourists and project India as an attractive tourist destination. Limitations of the Study and Future Research This study generated consistent findings. Of course, the study suffers from the limitation of varying number of visitors from different age groups and different social income group. Thus the findings may not accurately reflect the real-life scenario. However, the results are subject to limited generalizability because of low sample size as compared to the total foreign tourists visiting India. The authors feel that further study is needed in this direction, which must involve a more representative sample of tourists with different demographic characteristics. Nevertheless, data from diverse customer samples would help validate the results. Additionally, multiple regressions with the dependent variable being perceived attractiveness was not done in this study and further study on the same will be done by the authors. Another limitation in the study, the authors feel that only responses from foreign tourists have been collected. Although the expectations of foreign tourists and domestic tourists in India may not exhibit considerable differences, domestic tourism in India has also increased considerably. Therefore, had the responses from the domestic tourists also been collected, it would have presented a more comprehensive picture of tourism in India. A further research in that direction is considered by the authors. References
1

Ajzen I. and Driver (1991), Prediction of leisure participation from behavioural, normative and control beliefs , Leisure services, Vol 13 No 3, pp 185-204. 2 McIntosh, R.W. and Goeldner, C.R. (1990) Tourism Principles, Practices, Philosophy (6th edition), New York, John Wiley. 3 Hunt, J.D. (1975) Image as a factor in tourism development, Journal of Travel Research, 13: 3, 1-7. 4 Ritchie, J.R.B. and Zins, M. (1978) Culture as determinant of the attractiveness of a tourism region, Annals of Tourism Research, 5: 2, 252-267. 5 Crompton, J.L. (1979) An assessment of the image of Mexico as a vacation destination and the influence of Geographical location upon the image, Journal of TravelResearch, 18: 4, 18-23. 6 Garvin D A (1991), How the Baldrige award really works Harvard Business Review, November December, pp 80-954. 7 Cravens, D W., Holland, C W., Lamb, C W Jr and Moncrief, WC III (1988), Marketings role in product and service quality, Industrial Marketing Management, Vol. 17, pp 285-304. 8 Halstead, D and Page, T J Jr (1992), The effects of satisfaction and complaining behavior on consumers repurchase behavior, Journal of Satisfaction, Dissatisfaction and Complaining Behavior, Vol. 5, pp 1-11. 9 Fornell C (1992), A national customer satisfaction barometer: the Swedish experience, Journal of Marketing, Vol. 56 pp 621. 10 Chon, K. S., Christianson, D.J. and Lee, C.L. (1995), Modeling tourist satisfaction: Japanese tourists evaluation of hotel stay experience in Taiwan, Australian Journal of Hospitality Management, Vo1 2 No.1, pp 1-6. 11 Berry, L. L. and Parasuraman, A (1991), Marketing Services: Competing through Quality, The Free Press, New York, NY, p 31. 12 Kim, Hong-bumm (1998) Perceived attractiveness of Korean destinations, Annals of Tourism Research, 25: 2, 340361. 13 McIntosh, R.W. & Goeldner, C.R. (1990) Tourism Principles, Practices, Philosophy (6th edition), New York, John Wiley. 14 Tang, John C.S. & Rochananond, N. (1990) Attractiveness as a tourist destination: A comparative study of Thailand and selected countries, Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, 24: 3, 229-236. 15 Ananth, M. DeMicco (1992) Marketplace lodging needs of mature travelers, The Cornell Hotel Restaurant Adminitration Quaterly ,August pp.12-24 .

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Annexure 1 Table 1. Eigenvalue/,percentage of variance explained by ten factors, alpha Factor Outdoor activities Natural Beauty Culture and Tradition Cultural diversity Historic sites Beautiful places Nature Places of worship Rural life Outdoor Eigenvalue 8.495 3.292 2.174 1.994 1.685 1.475 1.355 1.172 1.117 1.038 % of variance explained 25.742 9.976 6.589 6.042 5.105 4.470 4.107 3.551 3.384 3.146 Cumulative % of variance explained 25.742 35.718 42.307 48.350 53.455 57.924 62.031 65.581 68.965 72.111 Alpha 0.8153 0.7032 0.7188 0.7130 0.7184 0.5321

Annexure 2 Eight Step Process to develop a Place Brand Step 1: Develop Clear Objectives Step 2: Understand your Target Audience Step 3: Identify your Current Brand Image Step 4: Set the Aspirational Brand Identity Step 5: Develop the Positioning Step 6: Create the Value Propositions Step 7: Execute the Brand Strategy Step 8: Measure Success Key Areas identified through Research for providing the Thrust to Indian Tourism (a) Swagat Welcome (b) Soochana Information (c) Suvidha Facilitation (d) Suraksha Safety (e) Sahyog Cooperation (f) Samrachana Infrastructure Development (g) Safai Cleanliness

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