Exploring the determinants of satisfactory shark tourism experiences from the participants’ perspective in Gansbaai, South Africa

Gansbaai, a small coastal town in South Africa, is considered ＂the shark cage diving capital of the world＂, despite there being over 40 shark tourism destinations worldwide. However, Gansbaai has one outstanding feature which few other destinations have: great white sharks. Because of this, Gansbaai attracts visitors from all over the world who travel to the area with the expectation to witness this particular species, making it an international hotspot for shark tourists. However, in recent years, a decline in the great white shark population has been widely reported in the media. The decline of the shark population is not only a problem for South Africa, but globally. Today, 172 shark species are already on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Yet, South Africa is one of the few places on earth where humans have the opportunity to interact with this species at close range. The outcry is great, as the impact on the South African shark industry has been profound. It seems that this has also had an impact on the satisfaction of the participants, as an ad-hoc analysis of online ratings shows. This is critical for the industry, as potential participants nowadays take their cue from the experiences of previous people.The main reason for this is the confusing plethora of tourism services available today. Therefore, the online review platform TripAdvisor has become a reliable source for travel decisions. Accordingly, analyses of online reviews have become particularly popular in the tourism and hospitality industry as it allows service providers to gain insight into what influences consumer satisfaction. This shows the importance for tour operators in Gansbaai’s shark industry to understand what influences visitor satisfaction in order to adjust their concepts sustainably. Therefore, the aim of the study is to identify the factors which influence visitor satisfaction in the shark tourism industry in Gansbaai based on TripAdvisor reviews.