Visitor satisfaction with Ghana’s tourist attractions

Abstract

Attractions play an important role in determining a destination’s allure, and for this reason many destinations seek to boost patronage of their products by marketing their attractions. Thus, tourist satisfaction with attractions is intrinsically linked to a destination’s fortunes. Yet, not many studies have focused on attraction satisfaction, much so within the Sub Saharan African milieu which presents a context that is rather different from the conventional settings within which tourism has been studied. This paper therefore set out to explore visitor satisfaction with Ghana’s attractions. It employed a mixture of quantitative and qualitative methods and interviewed 412 visitors to Ghana over a 3 month period. While the overall satisfaction was fairly high, attribute-specific satisfaction was found to be much lower. Overall Satisfaction was also found to have significant statistical associations with certain socio-demographic variables as well as repeat intentions. More importantly, it was observed that their intrinsic qualities notwithstanding, Ghanaian attractions generally lack the other elements of the ‘servicescape’, i.e. supporting facilities that make the attraction experience satisfying. The implications of these findings are discussed and suggestions for enhancing satisfaction at the attractions are proffered.