Bui Quang Thong

School of Business, International University, Vietnam National University, Ho Chi Minh city, Vietnam

Le Van Chon

School of Business, International University, Vietnam National University, Ho Chi Minh city, Vietnam

Ngo Minh Tan

Department of Internal Affairs, People Committee of Tay Ninh province, Vietnam

Phan Thanh Nhan

The management office for the Special National Heritage of Central Office for South Vietnam, Vietnam

 

 

ABSTRACT 

The Special National Heritage of Central Office for South Vietnam is a war heritage located in Tay Ninh province,  Viet Nam. The site has received about 50.000 visitors per year. The main challenge of the site management is where to allocate development fund for the site. This research used importance – performance analysis (IPA) to help provide the answers. The research interviewed 40 visitors to identify seven themes of benefits visitors expect when choosing to visit the site. Based on the interview analysis, measurement scales and questionnaires were created. The survey was carried out with 388 respondents, in which there were 341 valid responses. Visitors rated high importance on following issues: traffic, pride, historical remnants, knowledge and tour guides. They rated low importance on nature and service. They evaluated low performance on traffic and service. The analysis indicated traffic is the area that should receive highest priority for investment. Pride, historical remnants, knowledge and tour guides are the next priority for investment. Nature and service are two benefit themes of low priority for investment.  Segmentation analysis was also used based on the importance criteria. Five groups of customers with distinctive expectations and characteristics are also identified. Practical implications are also discussed.

Key Words: Special National Heritage of Central Office for South Vietnam, Importance – performance analysis, segmentation analysis, investment allocations

 

 

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

This work was funded by the Department of Science and Technology, People Committee of Tay Ninh Province, Viet Nam according to Contract no 12/HD-KHCN dated 24 July 2017.

 

INTRODUCTION

Heritage tourism has become a trend and attract hundreds of millions of visitors a year worldwide (Timothy 2011; The World Tourism Organization 2011). According to Timothy and Boyd (2003), a destination with the name heritage has large advantages in attracting visitors. The drivers of heritage tourism popularity can be the growing interest of visitors in historical events, in learning past stories and in the discovery of the link with the past or in reconstructing the meaning of the past (McKercher et al., 2005). Heritage tourism is a kind of tourism in that a society reserves valuable cultural or historical resources and intend to share them with travellers from different regions and countries who are interested in culture and history and willing to visit cultural attractive spots, built heritage, historical sites including archaeological sites, castles, museums, or battlefields (Cass & Furnish 2017; Jiang & Homsey 2008; Smith 2009). Heritage tourism has many benefits. It helps preserve historical places, enhance mutual understanding between different cultures and strengthen and diversify tourism economy (OECD 2009). For example, revenues that tourists bring to heritage sites may boost local economies and create job opportunities for local residents (Timothy & Boyd, 2003).

War heritage tourism is the main attractiveness of Tay Ninh, a province 100 km northwest of Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam since it hosts the location of The special national heritage of Central Office for South Vietnam. The Central Office of South Vietnam (COSVN) was created in 1961 and its functions is to command and coordinate all military and political effort against the government of Republic of Vietnam in the southern part and serve as intermediary for North Vietnam government during the Vietnam war (Wikivisualy, 2018). The heritage site is located in Tan Lap ward, Tan Bien district near the Cambodian border. High positioned leaders of COSVN such as General Secretary of Communist Party Nguyen Van Linh, Prime Minister Vo Van Kiet, Senior General Nguyen Chi Thanh, General Tran Van Tra have been living in thatched huts in the jungle to command military activities. Their thatches are called the ‘Bamboo Pentagon’ by American militaries. During the Vietnam war, US and South Vietnamese sent many special forces to search and destroy the headquarters of COSV, but was not successful and resulted in heavy casualties because the apparatus of COSVN could move around in the jungle and can manage military forces up to thousands who are widely dispersed and mobile to defend themselves as well as attack back the US and South Vietnamese militaries (ibid).

In 1990, the site was awarded Historical Heritage by The Ministry of Culture and Information. In 2012, the site was awarded National Special Heritage by The Ministry of Culture, Sport and Tourism. From 1975 till now, the site had undergone three main construction investments. The site covers around 1.644 hectares of land and forest. Main attractions include monuments for different governmental agencies in the war, a museum with more than 1,000 photos and artifacts, a historical cinema, reconstructed thatches where top leaders ever lived, meeting halls, systems of underground tunnels, camping sites…

From 2006 to 2015, the site has received 515.000 visitors, averagely 50,000 visitors a year. Although the numbers of visitors are positive, the management of the site has faced many difficulties. For example, what are the characteristics of visitors and what motivate them to visit the site, what attributes of the site they expect to experience, and how much important are these attributes? Motivations and expectations for a specific heritage site are closely linked to the choice of that destination (Chen & Tsai 2007). The lack of the above information leads the site management to the second challenge: how to allocate investment resource for the development of the site? Should the fund be allocated for collecting more historical artifacts, or for building more hospitality and accommodation facilities, or for promoting activities related to nature and outdoors, or promoting other values appreciated by visitors?

To answers the above questions, the management need to identify attributes of the sites that visitors value for their trip and the importance of these attributes to them. Furthermore, the management need to identify different types of visitors so as to design appropriate products and services (Isaac, 2008). Since the motivations and expectations of heritage tourists vary according to different heritage sites (Ramires et al., 2017), it is very important to identify attributes that are unique and relevant to the heritage site in investigation.

Based on the above, we suggested following research objectives for this study: (1) to identify important attributes that visitors expect when they choose to visit the special national heritage of COSVN (2) to determine the degree of importance and the degree of performance visitors perceive these attributes (3) to segment visitors into different groups with different types of expectations, (4) from the results of objective 1, 2, 3, recommend where to allocate investment resource for the site.

 

LITERATURE REVIEW

Heritage visitors’ classification and segmentation technique

There are many ways to define heritage tourism. From supply side perspective, heritage tourism is defined as “an immersion in the natural history, human heritage, arts, philosophy and institutions of another region or country” (The World Tourism Organization, 2011). From demand side perspective, heritage tourism is considered as a type of travel where heritage is the core product and the main motivation for travellers (Swarbrooke 1995).

As one of the benefits of heritage tourism is to enhance local economy where the site lies (OECD 2009), many heritage management have an urge to promote more visitors to the site. To do that successfully, the management need to design different services suitable to different groups of visitors with distinct needs and expectations. To identify different groups of distinct expectations, researchers in heritage tourism frequently use segmentation technique with benefits, expectation, motivations for the trips as segmentation criteria (Tsiotsou & Vasioti 2006). For example, Silberberg (1995) segmented visitors for museums and historical sites into four types: accidental cultural tourists, adjunct cultural tourists, in part cultural tourists and greatly cultural tourists.  Poria et al (2006) studied visitors to Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, a heritage site in memoirs of Anne Frank, a German-Jewish who hid in the annex of the house from the Nazis for 25 months, writing her diaries describing life in the annex. In their study, they segmented travellers into three types: travellers who perceived not connected to their own heritage, travellers who perceived to be a part of their heritage and travellers who are not aware that the site is a part of their heritage. Nguyen and Cheung (2013) in their study of tourists from package tours for World Heritage City of Hue, Vietnam adopted two criteria for segmentation: the importance of the visit and the depth of heritage experiences proposed by McKercher (2002). They identified five segments: sightseeing, purposeful, serendipitous, incidental and casual visitors. Nyaupane and Andereck (2014) in their study of visitors for a heritage site in Arizona, US, based on the motivations of visitors, suggested two groups: the ‘true cultural heritage tourists’ group who care about tangible and intangible heritage and the ‘spurious cultural heritage tourists’ group who care about activities carried out during the trip, such as engaging with nature, sports or business activities. Recently, Ramires et al (2017) adopted two criteria: expectation for culture and leisure, and value for money in segmenting tourists for World Heritage City of Portal, Portugal and identified three segments: 'conventional cultural tourists', 'spontaneous cultural tourists' and 'absorptive cultural tourists'.

 

Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA)

Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA) is one of the most popular tools used in tourism to identify which attributes of a certain destination travellers perceive to be important, and how well these attributes perform (Lai and Hitchcock, 2015). IPA helps identify the gaps between travelers’ perceptions of the importance of an attribute and the perceived performance of that attribute (Martilla and James 1977). The great implications of IPA is that it allows managers know which attributes needed to be improved or maintained, and which attributes have been underinvested or overinvested. From the information, managers can design more appropriate resource allocation for the organizations (Sever 2015).

In details, IPA helps graph the mean importance and performance of various attributed of a destination perceived by travellers. Thus, each attribute will fall into one of the four quadrants with following labels: Quadrant I: ‘Concentrate here’, Quadrant II: ‘Keep up the Good Work’, Quadrant III: ‘Low Priority’, and Quadrant IV: ‘Possible Overkill’.

While IPA is widely used in tourism (Lai and Hitchcock 2015), its practice in heritage and historical tourism is still limited to a few studies. For example, Rivera and Severt (2009) utilized IPA to investigate traveller experience and perception for a religious theme site named WordSpring in Orlando, Florida. They identified 18 attributes of the site and collected data from 176 visitors. The results showed that attributes such as spiritual activities, inspirational experience and something for everybody fall into the quadrant I “Concentrate here”, indicating more resource should be allocated to improve these attributes. Quadrant “Low priority” includes the price for food, gifts, restaurant facilities, transportation access, indicating that travellers do not pay much attention to these attributes. Physical layout of the facilities and admission price fell into the quadrant “possible overkill”, meaning that these attributes are not perceived important by visitors but their performance satisfied visitors well. Thus, the implication is to reduce investment on these two attributes. The seven remaining attributes (cleanliness, interaction with personnel, Christian theme…) are considered important and well-performed by the site. Another notable study for heritage site utilizing IPA is by McGuiness et al (2016). The site is Hamelin Pool Marine Nature Reserve, a popular short-stop site in Shark Bay World Heritage in Australia. The study surveyed 700 visitors regarding 14 attributes of the site. Data analysis also showed that the majority of attributes fell in the ‘Keep up the good work’ quadrant, two items in the ‘Possible overkill’ quadrant (‘To visit the Old Telegraph Station’ and ‘Swimming in the area’), one item at the border of ‘Low priority’ quadrant. No items fell in the ‘Concentrate here’ quadrant. The result implied that the site managers have allocated resource appropriately to satisfy the current needs of visitors.

Since IPA tool helps management identify easily and objectively where to allocate investment resources to serve visitors better, this study aims to use IPA tool to assess the perception of visitors about the importance and the performance of various attributes for the heritage for COSV so as to help crafting resource allocation for the site.

 

METHOD

Qualitative research phase

For the first research objective, which is to identify important attributes that visitors expect when they choose to visit The special national heritage of COSVN, we chose to interview directly 40 respondents. The sample size for this phase of research is based on the rule of information saturation (Glaser & Strauss 1967; Grady 1998). For interviewees who have not visited the site, the research team described shortly the heritage site and show them a short clip about site. Here is the link of the clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTQoUp0butQ. We used theme analysis to analyze the interview contents and identified 25 attributes of the site. We proposed six themes that cover those attributes. The themes and corresponding attributes are presented as below.

Table 1 Themes and attributes identified from the qualitative research

 

Qualitative research phase

Quantitative method was used to achieve the research objectives 2 and 3. Based on the results of theme analysis in the qualitative research phase, which include 25 attributes and 6 themes, we develop survey questionnaire to measure the degree of importance and the degree of performance each respondent perceived. We asked six people who are knowledgeable about tourism and research method to provide feedbacks for this draft. Based on their feedbacks, we revised the wording, make one new theme named ‘Tour guides’ with two attributes departed from the ‘Service’ theme. Based on this revision, we construct the survey questionnaire following structure recommended by Martilla and James (1977) for IPA. Then we carried three surveys from May 2018 to end of June 2018. The first survey collected 176 responses from visitors at the site and residents in Tay Ninh province who have visited the site before. The second survey collected 125 responses from diversified people who lived in Ho Chi Minh city. The third survey collected 87 responses from officers and staff who worked in various governmental agencies in Ho Chi Minh city. The first and second used paper survey, whereas the third survey used online survey with Google form tool. The respondents were asked to self-complete the questionnaire. Uncomplete responses were deleted and finally 341 responses are qualified and put into analysis. Respondents who have not visited the site are exempted from answering the section about degree of performance in the questionnaire.

 

Data analysis

Important-performance analysis (IPA) was carried out on seven themes with 25 attributes. Means scores of each theme are plotted on the IPA grid. We chose the scale means for the placement of the crosshairs as this choice are mostly used in the literature (Oh 2001; Tonge and Moore 2007). For segmentation purposes, K-means cluster were utilized since it is easy to use when data has many variables and it can provide tighter clusters than other cluster methods. We also chose the above seven themes of expectations about the site answered by respondents as the criteria of segmenting analysis.

 

RESULTS

Demographic statistics

Of 341 completed questionnaires, 46% are male and 54% are female. Regarding age, nearly 70% are from 17 to 35 age. Regarding occupation, 54% are office employees, 23% are students. Regarding workplace, 48.4% are civil servants and 34.6% currently not working for any organization. Regarding monthly income, 52.8% have less than 7 million Vietnam Dong currency (VND) (about 23.000 VND = 1 USD), 15.2% from 7 to 10 million VND. 62% prefer one day tourist trip and 27% prefer two-days trip.

Nearly 85% of respondents know about the heritage site before. 47% know the site through friends, co-workers and relatives whereas 29% are aware of the site through newspaper and online news. 73% have visited the site before, of which, 46% visited once, 19% visited twice and 13% visited three times. 24% visited less than one year ago and 30% visited more than one year ago.  54% visited in a tour trip, 15% visited by motorbikes, and 4% visited by their own cars.

When being asked to describe the purpose of the trip, on a five point Likert scale of agreement, the mean score of visiting for the memoirs of history is highest (mean = 4.2), the mean score of visiting for participating the activities of their working organization is second highest (mean =3.9), the mean score of visiting for entertainment and relaxation purpose is lowest (mean = 3.3).

Regarding the intention to visit the site in the next six months, mean score is 3.6 on a five points Likert scale. Regarding the intention to introduce the site to friends and co-workers, mean score is 3.8

 

Importance-Performance Analysis

 The result of level of importance showed that pride is the largest motivation for respondents to visit the site (mean = 4.4). To be specific, respondents expect to experience pride about historical tradition of the resistance against the invaders of the country, about the heroic lives of leaders and soldiers who have lived in the site. Traffic (mean = 4.3) is the second most important expectation, which include the time to travel to the site and the quality of the roads leading to the site. The next important motivation is knowledge (mean = 4.2), which is the expectation to have more knowledge about the war history and the struggling lives of leaders and soldiers in the jungle. The next important theme is the historical remnants at the site such as war artifacts, houses, memorials, tunnels (mean =4.2). The next importance is about the enthusiasm and attractive explanation of onsite tour guides (mean = 4.1). The two themes of expectation receive least importance are Service (mean = 4.0) and Nature (3.9). Service includes accommodation, food, entertainment, team building activities. Nature is expectations about forest and trees, the quietness, freshness and original preserve of the site.

Regarding analysis of degree of performance which shows the evaluation of respondents about 25 attributes belonging to the seven themes, the highest mean was assigned to theme Pride (4.4), then Historical remnants (4.1). Attributes belonging to three themes Nature, Knowledge, Tour Guide are the next high on the scale (4.0). Service and Traffic receive the lowest performance on the scale with 3.8 and 3.6 respectively (Table 2) which indicated that visitors are not satisfied with these two attributes.

Table 2 The mean of importance and performance evaluation

Themes	Importance		Performance
	Mean	Standard deviation	Mean	Standard deviation
Historical remnants	4.2	0.8	4.1	0.9
Nature	3.9	0.9	4.0	0.9
Traffic	4.2	0.8	3.6	1.2
Pride	4.4	0.7	4.4	0.8
Knowledge	4.2	0.7	4.0	0.9
Service	4.0	0.9	3.8	1.1
Tour guides	4.1	0.8	4.0	1.0

For the analysis of the results, the mean scores of each importance and performance of each theme were plotted on the four-quadrant grid. We used the grand mean for all scores as the crosshair (the gridline placement in the matrix) as suggested by Janes and Wisnom (2003). Four out of seven themes fell into the ‘Keep up the good work’ quadrant. The theme Nature fell into the ‘Possible overkill’ quadrant. The theme Service fell into ‘Low priority’ quadrant. The theme Traffic fell into ‘Concentrate here’ quadrant.

The figure 1 results showed that expectations belonging to the four themes Pride, Knowledge, Historical Remnants and Tour Guides received highest mean importance and performance, indicating that visitors expect very much about historic values and the feeling of pride about the heroic tradition as well as the acquirement of knowledge of the site and the quality of tour guides. The theme Traffic fell into ‘Concentrate here’ quadrant indicated that this attribute theme is very important to visitors when choosing to visit the site, and priority for investment should be made for attributes belonging to this theme. The theme Nature fell into the ‘possible overkill’ indicated that the nature of the site is highly evaluated by customers, but it is not the main focus or expectation when they choose to visit the site. Lastly, the theme Service fell into ‘Low priority’, indicating attributes belonging to Service is not of good performance to visitors, but luckily, it is also not important to them compared to other attribute themes. Thus, resource allocation related these two attribute themes should be limited or of low priority.

 

Figure 1: Importance–satisfaction grid with attribute themes rating for the heritage site of COSVN

The IPA results indicated that the site management have allocated resource rightly and the current investment strategies so far is on the right track to satisfy the demand of surveyed visitors. This is supported by the visitors’ willingness to return (mean = 3.6) and willingness to recommend the site to others (mean = 3.8). In the coming years, investment strategies should give priority to the improvement of transportation to the site such as road quality, modern bus service …in order to reduce the travelling time and increase the comfort for visitors on the go. The second priority should be on investment activities that inspire the pride and the knowledge of visitors about the site, about the heroic spirit of soldiers during the war. Investment allocation should also focus on enriching historical remnants onsite, for example, to collect more historical artifacts and non-physical values that facilitate the learning of visitors and the feeling of proudness about the heroic resistance during the war. Activities inspiring the pride of visitors about the site, about the war history can be promoted. For example, the site can organize activities so that visitors can experience living like soldiers in the war. Also, resource should be allocated to improve the quality of tour guides or staff in charge of interpreting and explaining the site and its stories to visitors. Finally and most importantly, IPA results indicate that minimum resource should be allocated to the construction of more facilities for accommodation, restaurant, entertainment... since these service are not important to visitors. The same rule should be applied to nature landscape at the site since visitors do not demand highly the nature and nature- related benefits with their trip to the site.

 

Segmentation analysis and discussion

As mentioned in the method section, we used the above seven themes of expectations as the criteria for segmentation. The result showed five groups of distinctive expectations.

Table 3 Five segmented groups and mean on seven benefit themes

	Enthusiastic tourists	Typical tourists	Incidental tourists	Value un-sharers	High demand tourists	Sample	F	Sig
n	59	133	29	12	108	341
Percentage	17%	39%	9%	3%	32%	100%
Historical remnants	4.06	4.04	3.23	3.73	4.71	4.2	84.9	.000
Nature	3.77	3.77	2.99	3.82	4.44	3.9	49.3	.000
Traffic	3.26	4.39	3.22	4.46	4.82	4.2	160.8	.000
Pride	4.62	4.34	3.59	2.56	4.83	4.4	107.8	.000
Knowledge	4.11	4.09	3.22	4.02	4.73	4.2	108.7	.000
Service	3.33	4.00	3.10	4.18	4.64	4.0	114.3	.000
Tour guides	4.1	3.95	3.03	4.04	4.72	4.1	84.8	.000

The first group accounted for 17% sample size. Like the whole sample size, they consider Pride, Historical remnants, Knowledge and Tour guides important. Their main distinction is that they do not consider Traffic important. We labeled them “Enthusiastic tourists”.

The second group accounted for 39% of sample size. This group is most similar to whole sample size regarding the mean of importance evaluation. They rate high importance on Pride, Historical remnants, Knowledge, Tour guides and Traffic. We labeled them “Typical tourists”.

The third group accounted for 9% of sample size. Their main difference is their importance rating about all themes are all low. They also rate low importance on the Traffic issue. The rating indicated that this group seem do not expect much when traveling to the site. Maybe they just follow their friends or co-workers to visit the site without any serious expectation. We labeled this group “Incidental tourists”.

The fourth group accounted for only 3% of sample size but bear a very distinctive characteristic. This group rate low on the importance of the theme Pride (mean = 2.56), not very high on the theme Historical remnants (mean =3.71) but expect quite high on knowledge, service, tour guides and traffic. Since this group do not share the value Pride about the heroic resistance. therefore, we labeled this group “Value un-sharers”.

The last group accounted for 32% of sample size. Their main characteristic is that they rate highest on the importance of all themes, even Service and Nature. We named them “High demand tourists”.

Chi-square test and Anova were used to examine the difference among groups regarding demographics and behaviors. Significant difference among groups were found in age, occupations, workplaces, media to know the site, the visited times, the intention to visit the site in six months, intention to introduce friends and coworkers to travel, and purpose of visits. There was no significant difference among groups regarding gender, income and time to visit the site. In details, regarding age, high demand tourists and value un-sharers have highest percentage of age from over 55 than other groups (both 17% vs. sample percentage = 7%), incidental tourists have higher percentage of age from 17-25 than other groups (55% vs. sample percentage =31%). Regarding occupation, incidental tourists have highest percentage of students (52% vs. sample percentage = 23%) than other groups, high demand tourists and enthusiastic tourists have higher percentage of civil servants and office staff (59% and 61% vs. sample percentage = 55%). High demand tourists also have highest percentage of war veterans (12% vs. sample percentage = 7%). Regarding media to know the site, enthusiastic tourists have highest percentage to know the site through online and paper news (61% vs. sample percentage = 48%) whereas high demand tourists has highest percentage to know through friends and co-workers (40% vs. sample percentage =29%). Regarding times to visit, it is interesting that high demand visitors and enthusiastic visitors has highest percentage to have visited the site three times (20% and 17% vs. sample percentage = 13%). Regarding intention to visit (again) in the next six months, high demand tourists rated highest mean (4.07 vs. sample mean = 3.57). Regarding intention to introduce the site to friends and coworkers, high demand tourists and enthusiastic rated highest mean (4.36 and 4.03 vs. sample mean = 3.84). Regarding the purpose of the trip, high demand tourists and enthusiastic tourists rated highest mean on the purpose of historical and traditional memoirs (4.48 and 4.29 respectively vs. sample mean = 4.17), whereas value un-sharers rate lowest on this purpose (2.83).

 

Conclusion and implications

The special national heritage of COSVN is one of the most important heritage not only in Tay Ninh province but also in Viet Nam. The site management is facing the core question: where to allocate the fund for development? This research attempt to answer the above question by looking at the issue from demand side perspective. We focused on identify attributes that visitors expect when visiting the site, quantify these attributes according to importance – performance rating, and then use Importance – performance analysis to identify where to best allocate resource. We also use segmentation analysis to identify different groups of visitors with different expectations and demographic characteristics.

The IPA analysis helps identify Traffic as the area that the site management should focus on resource investment right now and with highest priority since visitors rate high importance on traffic issue and currently didn’t satisfy with it. Traffic means the quality of the roads leading to the site and the time for travellers to travel to the site. The current road is not designed for high-speed travelling, so this is one of the most challenges for the management since this is out of the reach of the authority of the site management. The IPA analysis also indicates four themes that visitors expect very important and the site is performing well. They are attributes belonging to pride, knowledge, historical remnants and tour guides. The result suggests that the site management should also keep investing resource on these attributes so as to make it better and better. The theme that visitors do not highly demand, but the site is performing well is related to nature. The theme of low importance but the site is not performing well is related to service. The results indicate these two themes should be of low priority in investment. Since service in this study refer to only accommodation, food and entertainment activities, service activities that enhance the experience of pride, knowledge of visitors should not be limited. Likewise, investment for nature landscape that enhance the above four important themes should be of priority for investment. But investment for natural landscape that promotes entertainment or relaxation purposes should be limited.

The research also used the seven themes of benefit importance as criteria for segmenting the visitors. The result showed five groups of visitors that are distinct in their expectations when visiting the site. Among these, enthusiastic, typical and high demand visitors are the majority and has highest intention to visit (again) and to introduce the site to friends and co-workers. Only a few differences regarding demographic and behaviours among the five groups are found significant.

The result of this research is useful for management of the site to decide which attributes of the site they should increase/decrease priority for improvement and investment if they want to satisfy more visitors with limited resources. The result also help management to choose the targeted group of visitors that suit most to the values and the strengths of the site. For example, if the management choose the three groups enthusiastic, typical and high demand visitors as their targeted customers, they will have information to design products and services suitable to the needs of these groups. 

Finally, this research has many limitations. The sample size is not representative for the whole visitors of the site. The construction of seven themes of expectations and the survey questionnaire is quite subjective. This leads to the question of the validity of the survey questionnaire. But we have no choice in this issue since each heritage site is unique in its attributes, so it is not practical to use measurement scales in the literature. Last but not least, among five segmented groups, two groups have small sample size, so its characteristics and profiles could not be generalized.  

 

 

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