Measuring tourist experience for homestay tourism in an emerging market

Tourism is a very important service sector in the emerging economies. One of the potential tourism products, the homestay programmes, requires more effective and efficient management process typically in the area of performance measurement and management for more effective income generation and sustainability of the programmes. However, scant attention had been given to the scientific performance measurement system and a unique competitive edge has yet to be identified for the measurement domains and process. Tourist experience is believed to be the potential key. A scientific enquiry on the homestay experience will be the potential differentiation tool for sustainable competitive advantage. This paper presents the empirical research which employed the qualitative and quantitative techniques to measure tourist experience for homestay programmes. The analysis was based on more than three hundred usable questionnaires and eight dimensions of tourist experience were found. Reliability analysis was done on the measurement items and thereafter an Exploratory Factory Analysis was performed. The items were loaded into eight dimensions, namely: Culture, Guiding Service, Food and Beverage, Environment, Cleanliness, Accommodation, Services and Accessibility. Thereafter, the Confirmatory Factor Analysis was done. The Measurement Model was developed and the fit indices were good. The Structural Equation Modeling for the causal model (Tourist Experience-Tourist Satisfaction) also showed a satisfactory model fit. The impact of tourist experience on tourist satisfaction was promising. Managerial and research implications of the measurement were discussed for more effective tourist experience management.