Abstract
This study investigates the relationship between the quality of hospitality services and sustainable equestrian tourism development in Slovenia. The focus will be on the relations between equestrian tourism motivations, hospitality services quality, overall service quality, equestrian tourists’ satisfaction, and behavioral intentions. The target population was equestrian tourists who stayed in one of 30 tourism farms in Slovenia and used both accommodation and food and beverage services. Face-to-face surveys with convenience sampling were used for the data collection. The results show that equestrian tourism motivations are positively associated with both hospitality services quality and the overall service quality in equestrian tourism. Moreover, the overall service quality in equestrian tourism is positively related to equestrian tourists’ satisfaction, while equestrian tourists’ satisfaction is positively related to behavioral intentions. In addition, accommodation service quality and food and beverage service quality both mediate the association between equestrian tourism motivation and overall satisfaction. The study provides both theoretical and practical implications. For one thing, it fills the research gaps present in the literature. In addition, it gives practical guidelines to farmers and tourism practitioners regarding equestrian tourism development as one of the popular areas of sustainable tourism development in rural settings.
Highlights
Hospitality services, such as accommodation and food and drink, are an essential part of the tourism product [1,2]
This study investigates the relationship between the quality of hospitality services and sustainable equestrian tourism development in Slovenia
The results show that equestrian tourism motivations are positively associated with both hospitality services quality and the overall service quality in equestrian tourism
Summary
Hospitality services, such as accommodation and food and drink, are an essential part of the tourism product [1,2]. This means that there is no adequate tourism product without quality accommodation service and food and beverage service [3,4]. Hospitality services, present an integral part of every tourism product [5,6]. A necessary condition to participate in either tourism or sports activities is motivation [7]. There have been many studies that have presented the most important aspects of tourism motivation [9,10], as well as in sports tourism [11]. Wann et al [12] developed and tested a sport fan motivation scale (SFMS) to identify intrinsic and extrinsic sport spectators’ motivations, which was later modified by Daniels and Norman [13] for the purposes of equestrian tourism
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