Museum Service Quality, Satisfaction, and Revisit Intention: Evidence from the Foreign Tourists at Bangkok National Museums in Thailand

Despite its importance to Thailand, museum tourism has not received sufficient attention from researchers and practitioners. Consequently, knowledge of museum tourist responses toward museum service quality is quite limited. Thus, the purpose of this study was to (1) examine the service quality of museums in Thailand and (2) revealed how tourists react positively namely through satisfaction and revisit intentions. This study further explored how the proposed relationships vary between Asian and European tourists. Based on Harrison and Shaw's (2004) museum experience model, facilities, staff services, and exhibition experience were proposed as three important service elements encountered during a service experience. Data were collected from foreign tourists who visited any of the 6 national museums in Bangkok. A total of 260 questionnaires were obtained over a 3-month period, all of which were retained and utilized for the analysis. Results found that exhibition experience and staff services were positively associated with tourist museum visit satisfaction, which in turn acted on revisit intention. In addition, exhibition experience was found to be the most important service element for Asian tourists, while staff services was most important for European tourists. Staff services and exhibition experience both played important roles in the tourist museum experience, while facilities did not have an effect on the evaluation of museum services. In response, museum managers need to implement a segmentation strategy that considers tourists' backgrounds such as region, culture, or nationality.