Assessing patrons’ satisfaction with the cultural heritage attribute (accommodation) in the historical city "Isfahan, Iran"(Abbasi Hotel)

Resumo

Nowadays, the valorization of heritage is valuable for many societies. Experiencing heritage is a means of enabling people to approve their membership of a nation. In addition, scholars state that heritage is necessary for progress in marketing methods and management in the tourism eld. This study investigated and revealed the potential of architectural heritage as well as the examination of tourist satisfaction through adaptive reuse of heritage sites. The question `How can heritage resource be converted to a tourist product?' is derived from the research problem. The purpose of this study is to discover the role of architecture of the heritage hotel that aect on patrons' satisfaction and to identify the relationship between heritage accommodation as a cultural heritage attribute and patrons' satisfaction, also to analyze how the tourism characteristics, architectural attractions, physical infrastructure and service quality impacts on customer satisfaction and behavioral intention. Research data was collected from tourists who stayed in the Safavi heritage hotel in Isfahan with semi-structured questionnaires. The ndings showed that the patrons were highly satised with the architecture of heritage hotel and that architecture was the factor with the highest satisfaction rating among the 4 dimensions in the heritage hotel. Although the majority of the patrons were not highly satised with the service quality, they recommended this hotel. This research focuses particularly on the impact of architectural attractions, physical environment and quality of service on tourist satisfaction of a heritage accommodation in Isfahan. The research was carried out in order to support the heritage site in conservation and also help tourism marketers to explore and fulll customers' needs.