Impact of Samarkand’s Destination Attributes on International Tourists’ Revisit and Word-of-Mouth Intention

Samarkand, Uzbekistan is a relatively unknown but emerging tourism destination. The city was once a major trading hub along the Great Silk Road. The once great city of Samarkand was hidden from the world tourism market, only to emerge after the country gained its independence in 1991. Since then, the artistically beautiful and historically-rich monuments have been attracting tourists from around the world. However, Samarkand has not been gaining much research attention at the same rate as international tourist arrivals. Thus, this study aims to comprehensively assess the city’s destination attributes and their impact on international visitor loyalty behaviors. The literature review process identified 16 destination attribute dimensions. Additionally, cognitive and affective evaluation, satisfaction, revisit intention, and word-of-mouth intention were identified and added to form the study model. A total of 223 international tourist samples were collected in Samarkand to validate the proposed model. The findings revealed 10 attributes to be consistently rated by the samples. Subsequently, the attributes were significantly influencing all subsequent hypothesized relationships. Both theoretical and practical implications are also discussed.

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