What makes wildlife tourists happy and what disappoints them? Learning from reviews posted on tripadvisor

Abstract

Wildlife tourism is one of the fastest growing tourism sectors worldwide and has been increasingly used to promote tourism in certain countries. With 26 national parks and 61 wildlife reserves covering 13% of its land surface area, Sri Lanka has a great potential to become one of the world’s hotspots for wildlife tourism. However, in order to ensure a sustainable development of this sector it is essential to evaluate tourists’ level of satisfaction with their experience. This research examined the main factors contributing to tourist satisfaction / dissatisfaction in Sri Lanka’s most visited national park. QDA Miner and Wordstat software were used for the qualitative content analysis and coding of reviews posted by international tourists on TripAdvisor. The research revealed that the great majority of visitors were satisfied with their visit at Yala National Park. However, this overall assessment masks a highly uneven visitor experience which was understood only after qualitatively analyzing the content of the visitors’ comments. The study found that satisfaction/dissatisfaction of visitors depends on three main factors: the number and diversity of animals, the number of vehicles and tourists and the knowledge and skills of guides and drivers. These findings have a number of managerial implications which are highlighted at the end of the study.