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Perception of the quality of tourist services in rural areas: Cuenca-Ecuador case

Abstract:

The aim of this paper is to analyze the perceptions of the quality of the service of the tourists who visited the rural areas of the city of Cuenca, Ecuador, as a complement to the tourist offer of this destination -cultural heritage of humanity-. A questionnaire with a scale Servqual - Service Quality was obtained from a sample of 326 tourists to measure the quality of tourist services. An Exploratory Factor Analysis (AFE) was applied to determine the dimensions of service quality that collected only the perceptions of the defined elements and a Confirmatory Factor Analysis (AFC) to confirm the factorial structure. The findings show five dimensions of quality: security, tangibility, trust, empathy and capacity, and its factorial structure was corroborated, with an adjustment of the appropriate indices. The study suggests that rural spaces should offer quality in their tourism offer as an attraction for tourists within the destination.