ABSTRACT
Repeat tourists are viewed as a less risky target market and are more profitable for tourism and hospitality businesses (Petrick 2004). Whilst there are different typologies of tourists such as repeaters and continuous switchers, it is important for destination marketers to attract new customers while retaining existing ones. Destination marketers usually assess the degree of loyalty to determine the effectiveness of their marketing strategies (Flavian et al. 2001). Loyalty is an important factor influencing the competitiveness of destinations. The concept of loyalty, originated in the 1920s (Copeland 1923), is defined as a ‘deeply held commitment to re-buy or re-patronize a preferred product/service consistently in the future, thereby causing repetitive same brand or same brand set purchasing, despite situational influences and marketing efforts having the potential to cause switching behaviour’ (Oliver 1999: p. 34). Loyalty in the tourism literature is borrowed from the consumer behaviour literature, but adapted to the specific characteristics of the tourism and hospitality industry (Baloglu 2001). It is widely accepted that tourists who are satisfied with their destination visit would revisit that destination. However, a range of factors influence tourists’ loyalty towards a destination and an understanding of such antecedents is important to developing and improving marketing strategies. The purpose of this study is to identify key constructs that relate to loyalty behaviours in the tourism industry. Whilst research in the tourism literature focuses on antecedents of tourist loyalty such as satisfaction, value, motivation and service quality, there is a dearth of research on the impacts of new-fangled technologies such as social media and their impacts on the loyalty model. This chapter therefore considers a new loyalty integrated model with antecedents of tourist loyalty such as trust in social media, destination image, consumption emotion and satisfaction (see Figure 26.1).
