Title:
TESTING THE STRUCTURAL EFFECT OF TOURISM DESTINATION IMAGE AND PLACE ATTACHEMENT ON TOURIST LOYALTY THROUGH TOURIST SATISFACTION TO WEH ISLAND: THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN FIRST-VISIT TOURISTS AND REPEAT-VISIT TOURISTS

Authors:
Muhammad Teguh Aulia, Permana Honneyta Lubis and Syafruddin Chan ,Indonesia

Abstract:
Tourists who come to one area only consist of two types, namely new tourists and old tourists who come back. The more tourists who come again and again, then it is a good indication for a tourist destination because it means that he is satisfied and wants to come back again. This concept is known as loyalty. The purpose of this study was to see the effect of the image of tourist destinations and place attachments on tourist loyalty through satisfaction, with frequency of visit as moderating variables in Weh Island tourist destinations, Indonesia. The population in this study were all tourists who came and visited Weh Island. The expected number of samples is at least 150 samples. The results showed that of the 5 direct hypotheses, all of them were accepted and significant because they had a CR value greater than or equal to and a P value of 0.05, which met the minimum requirements of the accepted hypothesis. The results of testing the mediation hypothesis that the role of satisfaction of tourists when visiting Weh Island is partially mediated, and the results of the moderation testing, namely the visit frequency for the full model prove that the difference is not significant between first-visit tourist and repeat-visit tourist. In other words, there is no real difference between tourists who come to Weh Island for the first time and those who have come more than once in responding to all marketing stimuli contained in the model towards their level of loyalty. This implies that tourist destination managers can apply a model of increasing tourist loyalty with strategies to improve the image of tourism destinations and increase the sense of place attachment of tourists, so that there will be an increase in tourist satisfaction which acts as a partial mediator and will subsequently have an impact in the form of increasing tourist loyalty, without having to pay attention to the variable first visit tourist or repetition visit tourist.