Abstract:
Tourists‟ designation satisfaction on destination attributes plays an important role in marketing tourism
products and services. Therefore, determinants of tourists‟ destination satisfaction are an ongoing
debate in academic literature since destination attributes available in different destinations are
heterogeneous. Thus, the objective of this research is to provide empirical evidence on tourists‟
existing level of satisfaction on destination attributes in Sri Lanka. The study applies an empirical
model with five destination attributes; Destination attractions, Food & Beverage services, Tourism
price level, hospitality, Political and Social factors to determine tourists‟ destination satisfaction in Sri
Lanka. Judgmental sampling technique was utilized to select 251 tourists from seven countries who had
recently visited Colombo, Galle and Kandy locations in Sri Lanka. Data were collected via a researcher
administrated questionnaire. One sample T test, Mean scores and ANOVA were used to analyze the
tourist destination satisfaction. Analysis involved statistical methods such as reliability and validity
tests. The results revealed that the tourists are moderately and highly satisfied with destination
attributes; destination attractions, tourism price level and food & beverage services, hospitality and
social and political factors in terms of the tourists‟ country of origin. Chinese tourists were more
disappointed with destination attractions, food & services, price levels and hospitality than tourists‟
from other countries. The implications were that tourists who visited Sri Lanka were satisfied with the
five attributes used for this study and tourists‟ satisfaction with destination attributes has an impact of
their origin. Therefore, tourism authorities have to strategically identify which factors are seeked by
tourists in terms of their origin and improve them.
