Behavioral intentions of heritage tourists: Influential variables on recommendations to visit

Recent international research validates that heritage tourists not only spend more money per day during their trips, but also stay longer and travel farther and more frequently, than other groups of tourists. This distinguished profile of heritage tourists suggests a unique need to study their behavioral intentions. This study examines the effect of destination image dimensions, tourists’ previous visits and whether they are domestic or international tourists and their revisit intention in the distant future on the potential to recommend a heritage destination to others. To actualize the said objectives, data were collected from 798 heritage tourists in Punjab, India. Ordinal logistic regression was employed to test all the hypothesized relationships in this study. The analysis explains tourists’ probability to recommend a heritage destination as a function of four destination image dimensions vis-a-vis ‘architectural heritage,’ ‘accessibility and tourism infrastructure,’ ‘authentic culture,’ and ‘affective image.’ The findings also support that foreigners, repeat visitors, unstable and disloyal tourists in terms of their future revisit intention are more likely to recommend the destination to others.