Destination quality, experience involvement And memorable tourism experience: is it relevant for rural tourism?

Abstract The development of tourism industry includes the development of rural tourism based on Edu-Tourism. The biggest challenge of this industry is the lack of interest of the tourists to return to the rural tourism or Edu-Tourism destinations. The objectives of the study are to see the influence of destination quality, experience involvement, and memorable tourism experience towards clients’ satisfaction and to establish word of mouth of the rural tourism. Questionnaire were distributed to 200 respondents as the sample of the study. The result of the study showed that destination quality significantly affected tourists’ satisfaction and word of mouth; whereas experience involvement affected memorable tourism experience and tourists’ satisfaction. Furthermore, memorable tourism experience has significant impact on tourists’ satisfaction and word of mouth; and the tourists’ satisfaction significantly influenced word of mouth. The research is unfortunately limited the concept of satisfaction theory, memorable tourism experience and word of mouth theory to the rural tourism destination only rather than other tourism destinations.