Dissatisfaction responses of tourists in the Havana World Heritage site

Abstract

This paper aims to assess the relationships between tourists’ negative evaluation of key management areas in the cultural city, their overall satisfaction and future intentions. More specifically, this paper proposes a covariance-based structural equations model (CB-SEM) to assess the influence of tourists’ dissatisfaction caused by failures in tourist and cultural services, hygiene and infrastructure on their overall satisfaction with the cultural trip and their intentions to repeat it. Using data collected from 1500 tourists visiting Old Havana on a cultural trip, this paper confirms that a negative opinion on the management of hygiene, cleanliness and crowding is dominant in explaining cultural tourists’ lower levels of satisfaction. In addition, this was found to be the only factor with a negative impact on tourists’ intentions to revisit the city in the future. The results are useful for helping managers of cultural destinations to distinguish the areas that are most relevant in their attempt to promote satisfaction and loyalty in the context of cultural tourism.