TOURIST SATISFACTION ON KUCHING CITY: INSIGHTS FOR URBAN TOURISM MARKETING  

DR. VOON BOO HO
Universiti Teknologi MARA Sarawak, Kampus Kota Samarahan

 LEW TEK YEW
Curtin University of Technology, Sarawak Campus

INTRODUCTION 

Kuching is a flourishing modern capital city of Sarawak, Malaysia’s largest state situated on the island of Borneo. The city is well known for its green environment, spectacular Sarawak River and the Kuching Waterfront which has won many awards, the oldest Chinese Tua Pek Kong temple, Brooke era buildings such as the Astana, the Brooke Memorial and Fort Margherita with unique architecture, India Street Mall, the 1931 built General Post Office, the century old Court House and the many famous museums such as the Sarawak Museum, the Sarawak Islamic Museum, Chinese History Museum and the Cat Museum. Besides, her friendly people also make tourists feel at home.

Hence, being a gardern city, Kuching has great assets to be developed into a major tourism centre. Besides it is reputed as one of the Healthy City in Malaysia and another important asset that Kuching has, is the famous Sarawak Cultural Village which showcases the  unique multiracial and religious composition of Sarawak.   

            Therefore, to develop Kuching city into a major tourism centre, among the efforts undertaken has been to develop the city’s image as a travel destination. Example of such effort has been the promotion of annual city activities such as the Sarawak Rainforest Festival, ‘Kuching Festival and Cat Exhibition’ and also playing host to many national level celebrations such as the Gawai Dayak Open House and National Day celebration.

            Due to the rise of urban tourism destinations at a global scale, there is a greater need for Kuching  to be positioned as a unique tourist destination in this region to further fuel its growth - in line with the objectives set by the state, local city council and the Sarawak Tourism Board (STB). A major local newspaper (The Borneo Post) constantly reported on increasing efforts to promote tourism in Sarawak. News reports related to tourism often dealt with issues of environmental and cultural preservation, tourism marketing efforts, issues on increasing the numbers of direct flights and the promotion of annual city activities such as the ‘Borneo Race’ yachting competition, ‘Kuching Rainforest Festival’ and the recently launched Sarawak tourism campaign/ tagline, ‘Sarawak More than a Paradise!’ (Joseph, 2005; Raphael, 2005; Ringgit 2005).

DESTINATION IMAGE AND TOURIST PERCEPTION

In line with the city and state’s tourism focus, and the rising competition/ choice of tourist destinations at a global scale, the assessment and development of an appropriate destination image for Kuching City is crucial and important. To create an image that is unique in this region, it is important to understand tourists’ perception of Kuching as a holiday destination and its impact on efforts to market Kuching and its unique Borneo experience (Choi, Chan and Wu, 1999).

‘Destination image’ can also be defined as “the perceptions of individual destination attributes and the holistic impression made by the destination… consisting of functional characteristics, concerning the more tangible aspects of the destination, and psychological characteristics, concerning the more intangible aspects” (Echtner & Ritchie, 1991, p.8). The concept of ‘destination image’ has been widely acknowledged to affect the tourist’s subjective perception, his/her buying behaviour and destination choice (Chen and Hsu, 2000; Kozak, 2001b; Seddighi and Theocharous, 2002; Tapachai & Waryszak, 2000).  In view of the impact of an individual’s subjective perception on their choice of tourist destination, the media offer huge potential in influencing perception (Reeves, 1993).

Specifically, destination image should include people’s perceptions of the destination’s attributes, as well as more holistic impressions. Distinctions should also be made between those image characteristics that are directly observable or measurable (functional) and those that are less tangible or difficult to observe (psychological).  Moreover, images of destinations can range from those perceptions based on common functional and psychological traits to those based on more unique features or feelings.  The intangible and experiential nature of tourism activities means that tourists use both holistic impressions and psychological factors to select the destination of their choice (Jenkins 1999; Echtner and Ritchie, 1991; Hankinson 2004).   Using Kuching as an example, the functional attributes may include observable factors such as the weather and nightlife, while the psychological attributes may include less observable factors such as the local residents’ attitudes  and safety (crime rate).  Likewise, on the holistic side, tourists may form impressions that are functional (e.g. beautiful gardens) and psychological (e.g. crowded and stressful).  Tourists’ perceptions of Kuching may also be based on factors that are common to other destinations or features and feelings that are unique in the world.  ‘Shopping paradise’ and  ’rich multi-ethnic culture’ are good examples of common functional and psychological factors, while Kuching Waterfront and ‘friendly people’ are unique features and feelings associated with Kuching.       

As destination images are formed before visitors decide to come to Kuching, media plays important roles to influence perception of these images of Kuching, especially for new tourists. Studies to gauge tourists’ perceptions about tourist destinations normally adopt both the quantitative and qualitative approaches, as developed by (Echtner and Ritchie, 1991) to define a comprehensive image for tourist destinations. While the quantitative approach allows for statistical analysis of attributes, the qualitative approach provides opportunities to describe the tourists’ holistic impressions as well as the unique features and feelings associated with a place.  

TOURIST SATISFACTION AND TOURIST LOYALTY

Tourist satisfaction refers to the emotional state of tourists after exposure to the opportunity or experience (Baker and Crompton 2000).   The literature on customer satisfaction focuses primarily on the disconfirmation model of expectations, whereby tourists, like other customers usually have initial expectations of the type and quality of services to be offered in a particular destination.  These expectations are formed through information provided via tourism advertisement, brochures, past experience and also via word-of-mouth from friends and relatives. The extent to which their expectations are met by the respective destinations will determine the level of tourist satisfaction. Besides, perceptions of a destination are also influenced by their country of origin (Kozak 2001a).   

However, Spreng et al. (1996) suggests that tourists’ satisfaction is influenced by ‘attribute satisfaction’ which is the degree to which the tourist destination’s tourism products is  perceived to have met or exceeded the tourist’s desires and expectations. 

Thus, a tourist destination must design its tourism products that meet the demand of its targeted tourists.    Meanwhile, satisfied tourists are more likely to recommend the tourist destinations to others and they will remain loyal to the respective destinations (Kozak 2001b; Akama and Kieti 2003).  Given the relationship between tourist satisfaction and tourist loyalty, the assessment of tourist satisfaction can play a significant role in identifying the favourable destination images of Kuching that can contribute towards the success of projecting Kuching as a major tourist destination in Sarawak.  

METHODOLOGY 

This paper presents the findings of a questionnaire survey conducted on the tourists who visited Kuching City at the end of 2005. The structured questionnaires were personally administered to the tourists at the Kuching International Airport. The data collections were done on two week days and one week end, the interviewers also purposively reached out to the local and foreign tourists, male and female respondents were appropriately covered, so as to be more representative. A total of 205 usable questionnaires were generated from the fieldwork. The measurement instrument of tourist satisfaction was adapted from the scale proposed by Kozak (2001). Appropriate rewordings were done for some statements. 7-point Likert scale was used to measure the level of tourist satisfaction (1=Terrible, 7=Delighted).  After the preliminary check on the reliability of all its items, the item of “overall hygiene and sanitation” was dropped because its item-to-total correlation was lower than 0.40. Others items were more than 0.50 and maintained for further analyses including the descriptive statistical analysis using means and standard deviations. The internal consistency tests for items in each of the dimensions were done and the findings were found to be satisfactory. The Cronbach’s alpha coefficients for all the dimensions were higher than the acceptable level of 0.70 (Nunnally and Bernstein, 1994). 

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS 

The various findings are presented in this section, coupled with some discussions related to urban tourism. First of all, the brief understanding of the background of the tourist participated in the survey was done. The demographic characteristics of the respondents who participated in the survey are shown in Table 1. There were more male respondents (59.0%) participated in the survey and the respondents were mainly professionals (71.2%). Most of the respondents were Asian (57%), followed by European (34%) and Australian (6.8%). More than half of them (59%) came to Kuching for holidays. The average age of the respondents is 38 whereas the average number of visit is about 4 times.   

 TABLE 1:  Respondent Characteristics (N=342)

The tourist satisfaction was measured based on eight dimensions, namely accommodation, local transportation, hygiene-safety-cleanliness, hospitality and customer care, facilities and activities, level of prices, language and communication, and destination airport services (Kozak, 2001b). These eight multi-item constructs were found to be satisfactorily reliable (internal consistency) in measuring the required dimensions of tourist satisfaction, with their respective Cronbach’s Alpha coefficients of more than 0.70 (Table 2). The coefficients range from 0.82 to 0.92. The overall Cronbach’s Alpha value stands high at 0.98. Therefore, this 44-item scale can be considered as reliable (internal consistency) in measuring the tourist satisfaction.

            The results on tourist satisfaction levels (Table 2) for all the dimensions indicate that the surveyed tourists were satisfied with Kuching City. Their average satisfaction scores for all the dimensions were about or higher than 5.0 on the 7-point Likert scale (mid-point is 4). In fact, the overall mean is 5.19. None of the 44 satisfaction items is below 4.8. Besides, the standard deviations for all the items were acceptable.

            Nevertheless, the satisfaction levels for Local Transportation and Facilities & Activities were relatively lower compared to the other six dimensions. This indicates the areas of concern for urban tourism in Kuching City. The frequencies of transportation services, service quality, network and accessibility of the local public transports need to be reviewed and improved for maximized tourist satisfaction.

TABLE 2: Descriptive Statistics on Tourist Satisfaction  

Note: Overall Cronbach’s Alpha value = 0.98 and Overall Mean = 5.19, 

The next area of concern is about the dimension of Facilities and Activities which covers children facilities, suitability of nightlife and entertainment, availability of sport and health services. Besides, Airport Services, specifically on ‘Availability of facilities and services’ was rated relatively low at 4.88. However, the newly completed Kuching Internal Airport should have helped to resolve this issue of inconvenience caused and improve the level of satisfaction.  

The overall tourist satisfaction was found to be very encouraging at the level of 5.49 out of the 7-point Likert scale. The surveyed tourists revealed that Kuching can fulfill their expectations, they were happy staying in Kuching, they had no regret visiting Kuching, and overall they were very satisfied with Kuching.

 TABLE 3: Tourist Satisfaction and Tourist Loyalty 

As far as tourist loyalty is concerned, two behavioral aspects of the tourists were examined, namely word-of-mouth (recommending to others) and intention to revisit (Boulding et al., 1993). This survey discovered that the tourists were loyal to Kuching. The overall loyalty mean score is 5.51 (using 7-point Likert scale).  

Further analysis on the relationship between the overall tourist satisfaction and loyalty revealed that the satisfied tourists would be loyal to Kuching. There is a significant positive relationship between overall tourist satisfaction and tourist loyalty (r = 0.52,  p = 0.000). This implies that the tourist satisfaction needs to be high so as to stimulate positive word-of-mouth and have more revisits. The ideal situation is to have many delighted tourists.   

CONCLUSION 

Generally, it is discovered that the tourists were satisfied with Kuching. The overall satisfaction assessment was encouraging. More objectively, the tourist satisfaction evaluations were based on an established scale and 44 items were employed. The reliability of the scale was found to be satisfactory. The various aspects of tourist satisfaction covered in this survey are accommodation, local transportation, hygiene-safety-cleanliness, hospitality and customer care, facilities and activities, level of prices, language and communication, and destination airport services. Undoubtedly, it is believed that there could be other context specific satisfaction determinants to measure tourist satisfaction for Kuching, as a multicultural tourist destination. However, this paper does not examine the validity of the measure. Thus, future research can look at developing a contextual-specific Kuching Satisfaction Scale employing rigorous qualitative as well as quantitative techniques. Longitudinal data as well as appropriate random sampling will be needed for a conclusive research and comprehensive understanding on the tourist satisfaction on Kuching or other cities in this region, for advancing the measurement and management of urban tourism.