SATISFACTION AND LOYALTY OF LITHUANIAN RURAL TOURISTS: SEGMENTATION AND MANAGERIAL IMPLICATIONS

Tourism is becoming a very important and fast growing industry, where rural tourism is a very important part. Tourist loyalty is a very important factor determining tourist’s wish to revisit the destination; and main loyalty’s antecedent is tourist satisfaction. Accordingly, the research was provided endeavouring to determine how to turn satisfied Lithuanian rural tourists into loyal ones. The aim of the research was to reveal core factors affecting Lithuanian rural tourist loyalty. The obtained results reveal that variables that have to be considered to turn already satisfied tourists into loyal are: ‘natural features’, ‘destination marketing’ and ‘environmental preservation’. Considering that the variable ‘natural features’ remains at the constant level due to the requirement of large investments, ‘environmental preservation’ and ‘destination marketing’ are variables necessitating specific level of compatibility.KEY WORDS: Lithuanian tourism, Rural tourism, Tourist satisfaction, Tourist loyalty.JEL CODES: M310, M390.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15181/rfds.v14i3.86