CHAPTER ONE

1.0     Introduction

Tourism represents a key industry in the Nigerian economy. In 2004, Nigerian received more than 12 million tourists with tourism representing approximately 8% of the GDP. Tourism also plays an important role in the Nigerian employment marketplace since more than 10% the population is employed in tourism-related sectors. Rivers State in the south of Nigeria, belongs to the top 10 travel destinations with the local economy relying mostly on the tourism-related activities and oil.

Despite the exceptionally favourable conditions for tourism (quality beaches, warm climate, hospitable and friendly community and multiculturally-attuned), Rivers State has recently experienced some difficulty in maintaining its position as a preferred travel destination. Compared to 2004, the number of tourists entering Rivers State decreased by 0.8% with lodging demand decreasing by 4.8% (AHETA, 2005).

Although several external factors could be mentioned as passive reasons for this occurrence, the current condition of tourism in Rivers State is much the result of emerging new holiday destinations that offer lower prices and, in some cases, higher quality facilities (AHETA, 2005).

Even though the study of consumer loyalty has been pointed out in the marketing literature as one of the major driving forces in the new marketing era (Brodie et al., 1997), the analysis and exploration of this concept is relatively recent in tourism research. Some studies recognize that understanding which factors increase tourist loyalty is valuable information for tourism marketers and managers (Flavian et al., 2001). Many destinations rely strongly on repeat visitation because it is less expensive to retain repeat tourists than to attract new ones (Um et al., 2006). In addition, Baker and Crompton (2000) show that the strong link between consumer loyalty and profitability is a reality in the tourism industry.

The study of the influential factors of destination loyalty is not new to tourism research. Some studies show that the revisit intention is explained by the number of previous visits (Mazurki, 1989; Court and Lupton, 1997; Petrick et al., 2001). Besides destination familiarity, the overall satisfaction that tourists experience for a particular destination is also regarded as a predictor of the tourist’s intention to prefer the same destination again (Oh, 1999; Kozak and Rimmington, 2000; Bowen, 2001; Bigné and Andreu, 2004; Alexandros and Shabbar, 2005; Bigné et al., 2005). Other studies propose more comprehensive frameworks. Bigné et al. (2001) model return intentions to Spanish destinations through destination image, perceived quality and satisfaction as explanatory variables. Yoon and Uysal (2005) use tourist satisfaction as a moderator construct between motivations and tourist loyalty.