Accommodation preferences, Memorable Tourism Experience and its Outcomes – A Comparative Study on Homestays vs Other Accommodation among Tourists

Abstract

This study was administered on 507 foreign tourists who visited Kerala, India prior to October 2019 using social media promotion and online survey across UNWTO’s six tourism regions. In this study the researcher tries to find out the holiday dimensions such as relaxing, fun, overall enjoyment, thrill, customer delights, uniqueness in the holiday felt among people who preferred different accommodation choices against homestays which are key elements in measuring Memorable Tourism Experiences(MTE). Further the outcomes of MTE namely vivid recall ability, word of mouth and social media share and revisit intentions were checked using correlation and regression. It was found that foreign tourists who prefer homestays have higher revisit intentions and vivid recall ability but poor word of mouth and social media share habits. At the same time the uniqueness of homestays are  in very high customer delight and uniqueness they experience.