IMPACT OF HOSTPRENEURS’ CHALLENGES ON TOURIST LOYALTY MEDIATED THROUGH TOURIST SATISFACTION

Abstract

Homestay is becoming popular among tourists as an alternative tourism product which gives more authentic experiences of the local culture of the visiting country. It is a form of tourism that is closely related to the nature, culture, customs and traditions of the local community. Homestay is considered as an alternative strategy to improve the socioeconomic conditions of rural areas. Therefore, this paper explores the effect of the challenges of hostpreneurs on tourist satisfaction and loyalty in homestays and the mediating impact of tourist satisfaction. The questions in the form of a questionnaire survey were used to collect the data from the participants using a purposive sampling method and were analysed by exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling. The research provide s useful information to tourism stakeholders, policymakers, and homestay operators. The negative impact of hostpreneur challenges may be reduced by offering better service quality, training, infrastructure and policy support to enhance the satisfaction of the tourists and build loyalty. The results also underscore the necessity to use focused interventions that can lead to capacity-building programs, improved institutional support, and strategic marketing to empower the homestay sector and enhance sustainable development of tourism. The research can provide practical recommendations to the tourism stakeholders on how they can better understand the tourist behaviour and help to improve homestay services, to boost the local economies as well as to promote the development of entrepreneurship by means of creating better policies with regards to the characteristics of the entrepreneurships, training and education programmes in the future. This study adds value to the tourism and entrepreneurship literature by incorporating hostpreneur challenges into the framework of satisfaction-loyalty. It gives empirical evidence of the complete mediating effect of tourist satisfaction in homestay situations, which is a gap in t he current studies. It adds value to the study of the impact of micro-level entrepreneurial constraints in determining the outcomes of tourist behaviour and provides a new approach to academic study and practice.