Destination image and the tourists’ satisfaction in Uganda :

Abstract

The study was about destination image and the tourists’ satisfaction in Uganda. The study was aimed at achieving the following objectives; examine the effects of cognitive image on tourists’ satisfaction, to examine the effects of cultural image on tourists’ satisfaction and to examine the effects of infrastructure factor on tourists’ satisfaction. The study discovered that despite the importance of destination image on the tourism sector very few papers have tried to explore the relationship of destination image on tourists’ satisfaction in Uganda. This creates the question of what is the impact of destination image on the tourists’ satisfaction in the Ugandan Economy? 36 respondents were selected to give their views about destination images and tourist satisfaction and closed ended questionnaire was the main tool used to collect the responses from the different respondents. We used across sectional research design and a quantitative approach. Findings showed that there is a very significant effect between destination image and tourist satisfaction; cognitive image and tourist satisfaction; and, infrastructure factor and tourist satisfaction. The study therefore, recommends that improvement of tourist satisfaction requires a good destination image having facilities, cognitive images for instance the tourist attractions, accommodation and infrastructure.