Qualitative research of countryside tourism services in lithuani

The aim of the thesis is to evaluate quality of country tourism services. The paper is aimed to determine expectations of the potential users of country tourism services towards service quality. The paper attempts to define the priority of assessment criteria of country tourism service quality manifested by users and to determine standard assessment criteria. It is also aimed to analyze factors that mostly influence expectations of users of country tourism services towards service quality and describe assessment of users towards expected and experienced service quality. The study also aims at offering marketing criteria that will foster tourism development in Lithuania and increase satisfaction of users with quality of provided services. During the present research 96 users of country tourism services have been inquired in Kaunas city. The results showed that country tourism services are popular enough and the users are satisfied with their quality because they order these services repeatedly. Young people mostly up to 30 use these services. There is a lack of publicity about country tourism services or it cannot reach the potential users. The most important expectations of the users are satisfaction in the nature, a possibility to spend time in solitary, ancient environment with minimal comfort and a possibility to communicate with owners of homesteads in order to feel guests are. Furthermore, the users mostly lack entertainment, genuine homesteads and the sense of the ancient, privacy, a possibility to ride and look for adventures as well as a bigger variety of bathhouses. The findings allow offering some ideas for a well-balanced development of country tourism in Lithuania embracing strategies of all institutional levels that act in the business development process of country tourism