Romance the Past: Identifying the Impact of Nostalgic Experiences on Revisit Intention of Domestic Tourists (Special Reference to Nuwara Eliya, Sri Lanka)

Abstract

Nostalgia is a past memory, a type of dream about the past or past experiences that have direct connection to the present travel decisions. Nostalgic Tourism is a particular type of authentic travel which focuses on a time sufficiently ongoing to be recollected by individuals who are as yet alive today. Tourists seek emotional comfort from a familiar past, so that they are more likely to prefer tourism products that are reminiscent of past moments. Thereby, individuals desire to purchase tourism products that can arouse their feelings of nostalgia, which will eventually lead them to a strong intention for repurchasing the same tourism product in the future. The main purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between nostalgic experiences and revisit intention of domestic tourists with special reference to Nuwara Eliya, Sri Lanka. The study mainly depends on the primary data that has been collected by through self -administered questionnaires and the convenience sampling method was used as a sampling technique to collect data from the 100 domestic tourists. Quantitative data analytical method was employed in analyzing the data using multiple regression. Findings reflect that nostalgic attributes has the highest impact of revisit intention of tourists Sri Lanka while nostalgic values being the least. Moreover, nostalgic characteristics too play a considerable role in impacting the revisit intention of tourists through nostalgic experiences. Mediating role of nostalgic triggers can be measured in future researches.