Remembered experiences and revisit intentions: A longitudinal study of safari park visitors

Tourism is an experience-intensive sector in which customers seek and pay for experiences above everything else. Remembering past tourism experiences is also crucial for an understanding of the present, including the predicted behaviours of visitors to tourist destinations. We adopt a longitudinal approach to memory data collection from psychological science, which has the potential to contribute to our understanding of tourist behaviour. In this study, we examine the impact of remembered tourist experiences in a safari park. In particular, using matched survey data collected longitudinally and PLS path modelling, we examine the impact of positive affect tourist experiences on the development of revisit intentions. We find that longer-term remembered experiences have the strongest impact on revisit intentions, more so than predicted or immediate memory after an event. We also find that remembered positive affect is temporally unstable and declines over time.