THE ROLE OF SOUVENIRS AND HANDICRAFTS IN ACHIEVING TOURISTS’ SATISFACTION "APPLIED ON LUXOR CITY"

Abstract

Souvenirs and handicrafts of a destination arevery important to most of travellers and tourists through their travel experience. As they always keen on having a tangible object to take home, which represents the places they have visited, the sightseeing they have seen, and the memories they have made.Since tourism is considered a complex industry, which consists of numerous services, facilities, and activities with a lot of intangible items that forms the whole tourist experience, the souvenir is the only tangible item that can be retained from this visited destination.Therefore, it is crucial to maintain a satisfying service at the souvenir and handicraft sector, to achieve tourists’ satisfactionat the destination. The objective of this research is to determine to what extent does buying souvenirs and handicrafts affects the tourists’ overall satisfaction. Questionnaires were distributed on a random sample of tourists at Luxor city. The overall findings refer to the importance of visiting destination’s bazars and its effect on tourists’ overall satisfaction to get a souvenir that reminds them with the destination.Results have revealed that there is a positive and significant relationship between bazars’ staff treatment, scamming, crowd, product variety and hassle with tourist’s’ satisfaction