Rio 2016 Olympics: Analysis of the tourist perception of quality using TOURQUAL

Abstract

The Rio 2016 Summer Olympics was a mega-event that changed the Brazilian tourism structure, particularly in the city of Rio de Janeiro. This article focuses on the evaluation of the quality of services offered to tourists during the event, analyzing the tourists' perception of quality. It is a quantitative, exploratory, descriptive research based on the Tourqual indicators and using a survey. The study interviewed 1912 tourists throughout the event. Data were treated and analyzed adopting descriptive statistics, student's t-test for mean comparison, and Spearman correlation, to define which indicators most influenced the result of the evaluation performed. The event's evaluation index was 9.28 out of ten. The results showed that the indicators that most influenced the positive perception were 'comfort, beauty, acoustics, and temperature of the Olympic venues,' 'variety of activities,' and 'transportation'.