International Business Traveller Satisfaction: An Analysis of North and South East Asian Visitors to Melbourne

Previously, considerable research regarding the effects of leisure traveller’s motivations, destination attributes, satisfaction and future behaviour (Aliman, Hashim, Wahid, & Harudin, 2016) has been conducted. However, to date, there has been little discussion about these relationships as they relate to business travellers (Chen, 2017; Chiang, 2009; Millán, Fanjul, & Moital, 2016). In the context of Melbourne tourism, the number of international business visitors coming to Melbourne has increased in recent years, outperforming the average of the national capital cities according to the Victorian State Government Productivity Commission (2015). However, there is a very little literature pertaining to the Asian source markets and, particularly, to the satisfaction and future behaviour of the North East and South East Asian business travellers to Melbourne. The present research proposes to analyse the impact of different issues on the satisfaction and ultimate behavioural intentions of North and South East Asian business travellers to Melbourne. The four major research aims are: (1) identify the motivations of the North and South East Asian business traveller coming to Melbourne; (2) examine Melbourne’s key destination attributes from the perspective of North and South East Asian business travellers; (3) investigate the influence of motivations and destination attributes on their travel satisfaction; (4) determine the relationships between their travel satisfaction, and their future travel and investment behavioural intentions. A conceptual framework which incorporates means-end theory, a tourism consumption system, and expectation-disconfirmation model has been built to develop a conceptual framework. The conceptual model is then tested via a set of eighteen hypotheses in which ten hypotheses are rejected and the other eight are accepted. The hypotheses are structured for testing using descriptive and advanced multivariate quantitative methodology, with data collected from an extensive questionnaire survey. The findings from 600 surveys confirm that the demographic profiles, the motives and the destination attributes have significant and important influences on the travel satisfaction of business travellers. However, the findings related to the issue of future investment are mixed. There is insufficient evidence to state that satisfaction measures result in positive investment intentions whilst in Melbourne, or the commitment to revisit for holidays or to visit friends and relatives, or to undertake education. However, it is also shown that positive recommendations do occur, as the respondents do state they intend to speak positively and to recommend Melbourne to their business contacts for investment, and also for future leisure travel on their return.