Recently, the number of domestic tourists visiting Jeju Island has been increasing remarkably, and the return visit rate is the highest in the nation. If so, what kind of experiences do domestic tourists visit to Jeju and what
experiences have a significant effect on tourism satisfaction and behavioral intention? This study was conducted to find answers to these research questions. The necessity of this study to measure tourists’ positive tourism experience to provide opportunities for further discussion to find out Jeju tourism experiences. This research aims to measure tourists’ experience especially in Jeju Island in order to verify the important factors influencing tourists’ satisfaction and behavioral intention. To accomplish the purpose, both literature review and empirical research were conducted. For empirical research, the survey was carried out at Jeju national airport from April 25th to the May 2nd in 2018 recruiting 314 tourists who finished tourism in Jeju excluding business travelers and tourists without companies. This study established 2 hypotheses
regarding the relations between tourists’ tourism experience on satisfaction and behavioral intention. To verified them, this performed frequency analysis, reliability analysis, factor analysis, correlation analysis, and multiple regression analysis using SPSS 20.0. After the hypothesis verification T-test and one-way ANOVA were also conducted to examine the differences of tourism experience by sample’s demographic factors and tourism tendency. The findings are tourists’ tourism experience was measured by 5 factors (involvement, personally meaningful experience, companion experience, local hospitality and unexpected surprising experience), the degree to affect satisfaction among the factors is the same order with above. The importance
of influence to word of mouth (WOM) intention was the order of personally meaningful experience, companion experience, unexpected surprising experience, and local hospitality. Involvement had no effect on WOM intention. In addition, the significant of tourism experience effect on the revisit intention was analyzed in the order of personally meaningful tourism experience, local hospitality, involvement, and companion experience. However, unexpected surprising experience had no influence on revisit intention. This research resulted in following implications. Firstly, tourism experience which effect on satisfaction, WOM and revisit intention are personally meaningful experience, companion experience, local hospitality. Therefore,
providing personally meaningful experience to each individuals and continuously innovate it are important for the sustainable tourism development of Jeju Island. Also, customized sightseeing programs are needed to intensify companionship while people traveling with their company. In addition, local residents should show their intimacy and kindness to tourists because local hospitality plays a key role to satisfy tourists and their future behavioral intention. Secondly, tourists behavior research should be performed to investigate the favorite places or experiences of tourists in advance and develop tour merchandising program to meet their interests to maximize their involvement during the trip. Thirdly, to give tourists unexpected surprising experience, the tour program should be planned to introduce wonderful natural landscapes, hidden gems,
and cultural resources that are difficult to experience in other areas. Fourthly, it needs proactive public relations to introduce the tourist attractions and various splendid activities which are not well known in the
past in order to experience it regardless of demographic and traveling tendency differences. Finally, the results of this study suggest the necessity that the additional common scale development and empirical verifications because tourism experience factors can be vary according to destinations or samples. Further empirical researches such as reflecting diverse seasons or the qualitative research are also needed to overcome this study’s limitations. This research will provide an opportunity for further discussion on the tourism experience
research and hopes to become a starting point for a new research.