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The tourist typology and quality of the tourist experience in Ayia Napa, Cyprus (Master thesis)

Μιχαλούδης, Δημήτριος/ Michaloudis, Dimitrios

The goal of this research is the collection of data about the characteristics and the choices the tourists make in their holiday in Ayia Napa in Cyprus. The sample consists of 151 participants, of which 79 are men (52,3%), and 72 are women (47,7%). The age grouping was done according to the model of Gibson (1994). Ages are divided into three stages 17-39, 40-59, and over 60 years old. In the first section, the "Tourist Roles Preference Scale" developed by Yiannakis and Gibson is used, and also the Greek version of the questionnaire from Yfantidou, Kostas, and Michalopoulou (2007) which evaluates tourist behavior. Following in the third section, the scale "Quality of the holiday experience-QOL", which is derived from the research of Meng (2006), is used, and translated into Greek by Dalakis, Yfantidou, Tsitskari, and Tzetzis (2016) and evaluates the importance of services. All answers were given via a 5-point Likert scale. The data analysis is performed by SPSS Statistics from IBM. For the reliability test the Cronbach coefficient a of all variables was found to be quite high (a = .851). In more detail, the first section concerning the typology was found (a = .766) and the third section concerning the phases was found to be particularly high (a = .893). The analysis of the results showed that the variable with the highest average refers to the question “14. Relax and get away from everything ". The results of the gender averages compared to the roles did not show any significant difference between them. Moreover, the tourist role with the highest levels of preference was the “Lover of the Sun” (SNL) (72.9%). As for the quality of the holiday experience, tourists are more interested in safety and hygiene. In conclusion, it turns out that all tourists of all genders and ages want to relax and enjoy the sun. Additionally, a large percentage of tourists (49.2%), prefer their holidays to be organized by travel agencies.