Chapter 8: Conclusions and Recommendations

This book bridges important gaps in theory and practice concerning tourism destination quality. Specifically, a review of prior literature has indicated that while there are various perspectives on conceptualising and measuring quality (i.e., the quality management, services marketing, and geographical perspectives), they are of limited value in conceptualising and measuring tourism destination quality. Therefore, the knowledge about what tourism destination quality is and how to measure it has been very limited and mainly deduced from other disciplines with no consideration or empirical evidence of what tourists associate with tourism destination quality. Such knowledge is essential to improving destination competitiveness and success through strategies that meet tourists' requirements. To this end, using results of a primary sequential qualitative and quantitative research study (the TDQ study), this book has investigated what tourists associate with tourism destination quality in terms of its attributes and dimensions. Further, this book has examined whether there are any meaningful significant differences among various groups of respondents based on their socioeconomic and travel characteristics.