A business tourist service quality scorecard for predicting tourist retention

D.Comm. (Leadership in Performance and Change)The National Department of Tourism (NDT), in the National Tourism Sector Strategy (NTSS), highlighted the need for research on tourist service satisfaction. According to the Global Competitiveness Programme (GCP), most of the dissatisfied tourists are business travelers. There are gaps in the literature with reference to the operationalisation of, and relationship between, service quality scores and retention scores in the business tourism industry. The contextualisation and conceptualisation of the proposed SQSC will be supported by a discussion on service quality, the Balanced ScoreCard (BSC), and the relationship between service quality and the BSC. The proposed mediating role of Business Tourist Satisfaction (hereafter mostly referred to as Satisfaction) will be highlighted, while evidence will be provided that Business Tourist Retention (hereafter mostly referred to as Retention) can be a criterion variable in this measurement. It is also apparent that using specific market segmentation variables will enable business tourism managers to build business tourist retention strategies