Tourist's motivation and behavioural intention between sun and sand destinations

Abstract

Beaches in Malaysia are becoming attractive destinations for tourists all over the world because of their tranquil beauty. Previous research indicated the impact of motivation on behaviour intentions. Thus, the mediating role of tourists' satisfaction conceptualised as tourists' motivation on behavioural intention in the tourism industry was investigated in this study. Participants of this study constituted 165 international tourists. Smart- Partial Least Squares (PLS) was performed by the Variance Based-Structural Equation Modeling (VB-SEM) to test the hypothesis. The mediating role of tourist satisfaction on the relationship between tourist motivation and behaviour intentions was highlighted in this study. The path relationship revealed that the mediating variable has a highly significant indirect effect. It was also shown that tourists are attracted by sun and sand destinations. It further suggests that researchers should conduct more studies to know more about what information travellers will tell to their significant persons such as friends, family, colleagues, etc. about their tourism experience.