Understanding customer-customer rapport in a senior group package context

Purpose: As the elderly population in Korea grows, sales of travel packages for elderly people are also increasing. Senior tourists should spend much time with other tourists because of the nature of package travel. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the significance of rapport with other tourists in the elderly tourist context. Specifically, the current study examined the relationship between other customer perceptions and rapport with other tourists. In addition, this study investigated the influences of rapport with other tourists on tour quality, tour satisfaction and word-of-mouth. Design/methodology/approach: This paper collected data from 411 elderly tourists in Korea and conducted a structural equation modeling analysis to test nine hypotheses. Findings: Physical appearance and suitable behavior positively affect rapport with other tourists and thus aid in increasing tour quality, tour satisfaction and word-of-mouth. Originality/value: In service marketing, there is a general consensus that customers are influenced by other customers who use the same service facility because they recognize other customers as the environment of the service facility. The concept of other customer perceptions was applied to tourism marketing in this study in combination with another understudied concept, rapport. This study is one of the first, as per the authors’ knowledge, to apply those important concepts to the tourism industry in particular, although there has been a considerable body of research in the service marketing field. Consequently, the findings of this paper would be meaningful and useful for travel agencies when developing a marketing strategy to enhance rapport between tourists.