Identifying and Prioritizing Different Aspects of Tourist's Experience Quality from Viewpoints of Foreign Tourists Traveled to Shiraz

Nowadays, tourist experience and tourist destination choice are the main focal points in the tourism industry and tourism-related subjects addressed at universities. As modern tourists are value-oriented, tourist destinations could only be successful if they create value for their visitors. Moreover, the Quality of tourists' experiences is a key competitive advantage for tourist destinations. This descriptive-survey study, therefore, sought to identify and prioritize different aspects of tourist experience quality from the viewpoint of tourists visiting Shiraz. The statistical population of this study comprised of those foreign tourists who visited Shiraz in April and May of 2019 and stayed at the Grand Hotel of Shiraz. To collect the required data, a questionnaire was administered on 400 visitors who were selected via convenience sampling. The questionnaire's construct validity was measured and approved by experts, and its reliability was confirmed by Cronbach's Alpha. Exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis were conducted to identify different aspects of tourist experience quality and validate the identified aspects, respectively, using SPSS and LISREL software. Moreover, to prioritize the aspects, the Shannon Entropy method was implemented in EXCEL software. The study's findings indicated that tourist experience quality consisted of ten aspects. It was also found that perceived interactive experience ranked first in that list from the respondents' standpoint.