Document Type : Original Article
Today, tourist destinations need to make tourists more loyal to these destinations in order better to market their attractions, services, and products. Making tourists loyal is legitimately important because, in addition to creating a competitive advantage, marketing costs for loyal tourists are much lower than marketing to attract new tourists. Making tourists loyal is the best possible strategy for retaining tourists and promoting the destination brand because one of the consequences of loyalty is word-of-mouth advertising and recommending the destination to friends and acquaintances. It should also be noted that in today's competitive world, the first trip to a tourist destination can mean something other than the success of that tourist destination. However, the repetition of the trip to the tourist destination and its introduction and promotion to potential tourists can determine the success of that tourist destination in the long term. Although many researches have been carried out in tourism to identify the factors affecting loyalty to the tourist destination, explain the relationship between these factors, and define different conceptual models for loyalty to the destination, few studies have been conducted in the field of predicting the level of loyalty of tourists to the destination and also, the predictive analysis of the highest and lowest impact factors on loyalty has not been done. Most of the studies conducted in the field of tourists' loyalty to tourist destinations have sought to find a conceptual framework and model to explain the relationship between various factors related to the concept of loyalty to the destination, and less research has been done in the field of predicting the behavior of factors influencing loyalty to the destination and itself. Loyalty to the destination has been achieved using new probabilistic tools, such as the Bayesian network, that can reason and draw conclusions with new evidence under probabilistic conditions. The present research was conducted to analyze the behavior of loyalty to the destination and the factors affecting it using the Bayesian network, a graph-type network based on the Bayesian theory.
In terms of the practical purpose and data collection method, the current research is a descriptive research type and a field study branch. This research is causal in terms of the relationship between variables. In terms of time, the current research is cross-sectional, and the data were collected in the fall of 2022. The statistical population of the research includes international tourists who traveled to the tourist destination of Tehran in the fall of 1401. The target population of the research was international tourists who visited five important attractions of Tehran, including Golestan Palace, National Museum, Saad Abad Palace, Niavaran Palace, and Milad Tower. In the current research, the quantitative information of the questionnaire was analyzed in Excel 2016 software and then placed in the Bayesian network as the primary information. This network was analyzed using Genie 2.2 software. SPSS software was used to test Cronbach's alpha test in this research.
According to the results of the research, in order to answer the question of how much the contribution of each of the factors affects the loyalty of tourists to the tourist destination, it is possible to use the analysis of the influence of each of the factors in their optimal state separately on the loyalty to the destination. According to the results of the research, tourist satisfaction is 19%, the feeling of security from traveling to the destination is 11%, the mental image of the destination is 8%, the perceived quality is 7%, the perceived value, the sense of belonging to the destination is 6% each, and familiarity with the tourist destination. Five percent contribute to the improvement of loyalty to the destination. In the retroactive analysis of tourist satisfaction factors, the feeling of safety from traveling to the destination and their perceived value have been introduced as the most influential factors, with 100%, 86%, and 83%, respectively. In the separate analysis of the influence of the factors in their 100% state, satisfaction, the feeling of security from the trip, and good mental image of the destination have been introduced as factors with the most influence, with the participation of 19%, 11%, and 8% respectively in improving the loyalty status. Among the factors influencing loyalty, tourist satisfaction has the highest influence on loyalty. Also, in the retrospective analysis, with the assumption of 100% loyalty, sense of belonging to the destination, familiarity with the destination, and perceived quality, each with 75%, 77%, and 78% influence, respectively, have been introduced as the factors with the least influence on loyalty. In the analysis based on the influence of each of the factors in the state of 100% separately, familiarity with the tourist destination, feeling of belonging to the destination, and the perceived value of each of them with five percent, six percent, and six percent respectively in the amount of participation in improving loyalty to factors with the least influence.
Since most of the stakeholders of the tourism industry are small and medium-sized enterprises and the marketing power of these enterprises is relatively low, policymakers can focus on the factors that have the most significant impact on loyalty to the destination, and introducing these factors has helped small and medium-sized enterprises in more integrated marketing and also inspired by these concepts in creating slogans for the destination brand such as "traveling to Iran is an experience beyond expectations" (exceeding expectations from travel is a characteristic of satisfaction is a tourist) or "Iran is a safe destination to visit." Stakeholders in the tourism industry can analyze loyalty behavior and factors affecting it by creating different scenarios, with retrospective analysis being the most important.
Authors are thankful to all participants for supporting this research. The manuscript did not receive a grant from any organization.
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
