Tourism Services in Kashmir: Perspective of Foreign Tourists

Abstract

Due to the complexity and globalization of today’s competitive business environments in tourism, quality has become one of the most important sources of competitive advantage. For tourism enterprises, it is no longer sufficient just to maintain a business now; it is also necessary to have systematic processes to manage quality and to gain and maintain competitive position. High quality tourism services attract large number of tourists and ensure tourist retention. Tourist retention provides higher profit contribution in terms of repeat visits. Besides, the need for delivering quality tourism services arise due to the fact that foreign exchange earnings in this industry has a high added value which contributes to the growth of the GDP of an economy. Therefore, in view of the growing importance of service quality for successful tourism promotion and development of the economy, present study is an attempt to measure the perceptions of foreign tourists in Kashmir. Based on data gathered, with the help of a self-developed and statistically tested research instrument, from three hundred sixteen (316) respondents, the study concludes that by and large foreign tourists are satisfied with tourism services but an improvement is needed in all dimensions to improve the overall quality of tourism services.