Tourists’ Loyalty Behavior in Pollonanruwa Sacred City in Sri Lanka

Abstract

As the leading service industry in the world, Tourism has a major capacity to progression the world economy through regional development. The industry recorded that 1.4 billion tourists to world in 2018, and upgraded above the 3.7% economic grow in the global economy. (UNTWO 2018). The growth was common to even Sri Lanka which contributed 4.5% to its GDP attracting 2,116,407 foreign tourists in 2017, as an elegant destination to world. Tourists’ intention to visit to Sri Lanka is aroused by well-dressed promotional program, where more weightage has been kept on world heritage destinations including the Cultural Triangle. At the tourists’ attraction, Udurawana 2018, recognized that there is a reducing trend of tourists’ attraction to cultural areas in Sri Lanka. Therefore this explanatory study conducted to identify the qualities should have with Pollonnaruwa as a world heritage ancient destination to advancement of the international tourists’ loyalty. Seven elements were identified, as Entertainment, Education, Event and experiences, Attraction, People Trait, Price, and Infrastructure to develop the independent variable. And Tourists Loyalty was the dependent variable of the study. 248510 tourists’ have visited in the year 2017 to Pollonnaruwa, considered as the Population of the study, and as the sample, 200 tourists were designated through convenient sampling technique. To test the loyalty behavior, tourists’ preferences were identified through well-developed questionnaire under the two research hypotheses (H1, H2). At testing all the hypothesis were accepted, where H1, in means tourists’ geo-demographic factors such as, tourists country of origin, marital status, sex, age category, income, occupation, and religion have shown significant association to vary tourists’ behavior in Pollonaruwa area. H2, in means tourists’ loyalty behavior was positively influenced by the destinations’ elements, such as attraction, entertainment, infrastructure, and people trait. Finally researcher suggested to develop Pollonanruwa area as an attracted area through enough infrastructures and entertaining opportunities, facilitating for all type of tourists needs to gain exciting experience