The relationship between Middle Eastern tourists' cultural values, expectations, perceptions, behavioural intentions and Gold Coast accommodation service quality

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the relationship between cultural values and the factors of service quality expectations, perceptions and behavioural intentions among Middle Eastern tourists in relation to Gold Coast accommodation. The literature is relatively silent in terms of examining these issues. Therefore, to address this gap, the present thesis examines the relationship between cultural values and each factor of expectations, perceptions and behavioural intentions of the Middle Eastern tourist in relation to the quality of Gold Coast accommodation services. The research is guided by a conceptual model that is underpinned by theories on cultural values, service quality and behavioural intention drawn from tourism and marketing management. Thus, the three research questions driving this thesis are: ‘To what extent do cultural values impact on the expectations, perceptions, and behavioural intention of the Middle Eastern tourist in relation to accommodation service quality level at the Gold Coast, Australia?’, ‘To what extent do cultural values impact on the expectations, perceptions, and behavioural intention of the Middle Eastern tourist in relation to accommodation service quality level at the Gold Coast, Australia?’, and ‘To what extent are gender, age, education level, profession, country of origin and cultural values predictive of each factor of expectations, perceptions and behavioural intention among the Middle Eastern tourist?’. The conceptual model of this thesis was tested by conducting ‘Hierarchical multiple regression’ to identify the relationship and the prediction between the demographic variables, cultural values and service quality expectations, perceptions and behavioural intentions. The result shows that the demographic variables and cultural values are predicting 20% (R 2 = 0.20) of the service quality expectations, 10% (R 2 = 0.10) of the service quality perceptions and 8% (R 2 = 0.08) of the behavioural intentions among the Middle Eastern tourist. Thus, this thesis result confirms that there is a significant positive relationship between the cultural values of the Middle Eastern tourist visiting Australia and the tourist’s expectations, perceptions and behavioural intentions in relation to the accommodation service quality level. As a result, the gap in the literature will be filled in this research area. In addition, the tourism and accommodation sector will be provided with valuable information about this thesis’s sample characteristics. This may contribute to the industry meeting the expectations of Middle Eastern tourists and fill the gap between their expectations and perceptions, which may in turn contribute to attracting more tourists from the Middle East. This thesis employed a sequential multi-method design that combines quantitative and qualitative methods by utilising 10 semi-structured interviews and 305 self-administered questionnaires containing both open and closed questions to investigate the influence of cultural values on service quality expectations, perceptions and behavioural intentions among Middle Eastern tourist visiting Gold Coast, Australia. The qualitative method is used in order to gain a richer understanding of the nature of the research phenomenon and to confirm the quantitative results