A Study on Service Quality and Tourist Satisfaction of Rural Tourism in India

Abstract

Rural tourism is a subset of tourism that would consist of wide range things such as farm/agricultural tourism, cultural tourism, nature tourism, adventure tourism, and eco-tourism. Any form of tourism that showcases the rural life, art, culture and heritage at rural locations, thereby benefiting the local community economically and socially as well as enabling interaction between the tourists and the locals for a more enriching tourism experience can be termed as rural tourism. Rural tourism is essentially an activity that takes place in the countryside. Rural tourism creates experiences for tourist who enjoys locations that are sparsely populated, it is predominantly in natural environment, and it meshes with seasonality and local events and is based on preservation of culture, heritage and traditions. Rural tourism has become quite admired since the last few years.

Owing to the customer-oriented service endeavours, tourism enterprises, either private or public, need to improve service offerings by determining the needs of their target groups. They have to understand the customer expectations, word of mouth, customer current knowledge, past experience, in order to improve the service quality of the firm. Within this context, this study aims at explore various factors that can impact the current service quality level of rural tourism services in India. This paper endeavours to evaluate the customer overview related to rural tourism quality in India.