| dc.description.abstract | The concept of loyalty have become a source of focus in the recent years in marketing literature and have drawn the attention of both academicians and managers alike. Besides, it has been observed that there have been a number of studies related to the concept of loyalty in tourism. Repeat patronage classified in the literature of general customer loyalty is named in tourism sector as destination loyalty or revisit behavior and is regarded as a situation desirable by tourism managers. There have been a lot of indicators employed by the researchers in order to find out the level of loyalty in studies into general customer loyalty. These indicators are categorized as attitudinal and behavioral ones. Such indicators as preference, price sensitivity, like, trust are considered under the heading of attitudinal dimension. On the other hand, such indicators as repeat buying and the intention to repurchase in the future, willingness in information sharing at no cost, word-of-mouth information, buying reference, publicity, willingness in potential problem solving and acting as an advisory body on the establishment make up the behavioral dimension of the customer loyalty (Garland and Gendall, 2004; Gounaris and Stathakopoulos, 2004; Oliver 1999; Reichheld and Sasser, 1990). The indicators used to measure customer loyalty in studies conducted in the international and national literature are travel frequency (Oppermann, 1998, 2000), tendency to recommend and revisit the destination (Castro et al. 2007; Yoon and Uysal, 2005), revisit and word-of-mouth information (Faullant et al. 2008), positive opinion, intention to revisit and tendency to revisit in the future (Kim and Crompton, 2002), perceive as a place to be revisited (Chen and Gü rsoy, 2001), re-choose, positive opinions, recommending to those who need recommendation, buying more, encouraging others (Yü ksel and Yü ksel, 2007), satisfaction and trust (Huang and Chiu, 2006), intention to revisit, recommending the destination to others and frequency to revisit the destination (Aksu et al., 2008). The data used in the study was collected through a questionnaire over the visitors from different countries to Marmaris and Antalya. During the data collection process, a close cooperation was established with 5-star hotels and some of the questionnaires were administered face-to-face and others were left in the rooms of the visitors at the 5-star hotels. The literature of customer loyalty and destination loyalty was studied and a questionnaire was devised comprising the dimensions mentioned in the literature study. The questionnaire prepared covers the dimensions of visit frequency, tendency to revisit, like, trust, preference for the next travel, regarding as the sole destination, and recommending to others. The demographic features used in the analysis of the study are marital status, education, gender, nationality, and age. A 7- point Likert scale was used in the study and frequency, percentage, standard deviation and arithmetic averages were calculated in the analysis of the data the responses of the participants in the study were analyzed using t test at 0,05 significance level along with one way factor analysis (ANOVA) in order to find out whether there are differences by demographic features in terms of the level of customer loyalty. 400 questionnaires were planned to be implemented but in the end only 205 questionnaires were used in the study, 113 from Antalya and 92 from Marmaris. Some of the demographic findings in percentages and frequency are as the following; A majority of the participants have visited Turkey before (67,5%), 57,1% of the participants are female, the majority of the participants range from 19-30 years of age and 31-40 years of age, those with an undergraduate degree are 37,6%, 58% of the participants are married and their general level of satisfaction level is 8,55 out of 10. as for why they prefer Turkey, climate conditions take the first place and is followed by service quality and hospitality. It is observed that those from Sweden, Norway and England prefer Turkey due to the climate conditions, which is the most influential reason in their visit. On the whole, the responses to the statements in the questionnaire are positive and well above the average. The responses related to the destination of Turkey are like ( x = 5,80), revisit intention ( x =5,77), recommendation ( x = 5,76), trust ( x = 5,16), preference ( x =4,64), not choosing anywhere except from Turkey ( x =4,28). According to the results of the analysis conducted to see whether there are significant differences, no statistically significant differences were found by age, education, gender and marital status. However, there are significant differences in terms of nationality. There are statistically significant differences between the visitors from England and Russia by the indicator of liking the Turkish destination (F= 7,602; p < 0,05), between the visitors from England and Sweden by the indicator of trust (F=4,195; p< 0,05), between the visitors from Holland and Norway by revisit intention (F=8,598; p< 0,05), between the visitors from Holland and Sweden by first preference of the destination (F=10,240; p< 0,05), between the visitors from Germany and Russia by the indicator of recommending to friends and families (F=4,307; p< 0,05), between the visitors from Holland and Sweden by not recommending to friends and families (F=2,928; p< 0,05). Due to a variety of reasons such as high competition among the destinations, increasing the product offers in terms of product segmentation to get the highest share from the tourism market, decreasing the cost of marketing and direct sales, increase in the income level in the destinations, word-of-mouth information and recommendation by the customers, destination loyalty deserve considerable attention especially in the recent years. The indicators of general loyalty levels are very high in nationality in the sample considered in the study. Besides, there are statistically significant differences among the groups. When the mean scores are examined for all types of loyalty indicators, it is observed that visitors from England like Turkey destination more and trust more, those from Holland have the intention of revisit and see turkey as their first preference for holiday and are in the tendency not to prefer other destination than Turkey, those from Germany have the intention to recommend Turkey destinations to others. Considering all the indicators as a whole, it is possible that tourists from England are more loyal than the others in destination choice. Furthermore, it can be concluded that also called as the third age group, those above 50 years of age are more loyal to tourism destinations. | en_US |
