Abstract:
Tourism is a fastest growing sector. Further, The tourist arrival almost reaching 2.2 million within first three quarters of this year and the industry being expanded to encompass Entire Island. Unexceptionally, south-west region of the country is becoming popular and experiences influx tourist arrival particularly from Kaluthara to Hikkaduwa. River cruise or the boat ride in Madu River has become as a very popular tourist product among the international and domestic tourists. Thus, Madu river boat has been included almost all tour itineraries toward south of the Island. Although there few studies on Madu River, there is no study on the Madu River boat safari impact of tourists' satisfaction on revisit intention of international tourists. The research investigation on tourist satisfaction can be an inevitable element for potential tourism development in Madu River.
As a holistic case study the researcher selected popular registered board service provided in Balapitiya. Five personal interviews were conducted with five boat operators on tourists' satisfaction and 100 structured questionnaires were collected from the guests, who were selected from five operators. The descriptive statistics analysis was done through, correlation and regression analysis through the support of SPSS 21.0 version. Descriptive statistics has implied exiting level of tourist satisfaction and tourist revisit intention. Further, multiple linear regression analysis has exposed how to impact interaction quality, physical environment quality, outcome quality, access quality to tourist satisfaction in boat safari and regression analysis has confirmed by 88.9% coefficient: deteimination.
The implication of the study emphasizes that the tourists' satisfaction should be taken into serious consideration to ensure the memorable experience of boat safari in Madu River. This would enhance the revisit intention of international tourists. Enhancing the tourists' satisfaction demands the better service quality and guaranteed product through proper human capital development and product designing and development. Further, sustaining the environmental quality and meeting the global trends and technological sophistication are underpinned criteria to ensure the potential market.
