Cultivating the Chinese market through destination loyalty: enhancing resilience in the Maldives

Abstract

Market diversification, one critical means by which tourism-dependent small island states can maintain sector resilience and destination life cycle stability, requires understanding of the destination loyalty of strategic new inbound markets such as China. An online survey of 1260 Chinese adults with previous travel experience to the Maldives identified positive proclivities with respect to revisitation and recommendation intentions as well as agreement that Chinese visitors were well catered for. Sample diversity, however, was demonstrated by cluster analysis, which revealed dominant ‘highly loyal’ (31.2%) and ‘loyal’ (37.1%) segments along with specialized clusters ambivalent about the catering (14.3%) or the revisitation intent (17.4%). Loyalty was strongly associated with older, married and higher income visitors who were aware that the Maldives is an Islamic country and who included the capital city of Male in their itinerary. Such information is invaluable for assisting target marketing and product development strategies, but situates in a context of bilateral asymmetry in which the Chinese government can destabilize small island tourism through decisions that curtail visitation by otherwise loyal residents.