Gondar City, a United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage Site in northern Ethiopia, was established in 1636 as the residence of the then Emperor Fasilidas. Gondar, known as the Camelot of Africa, was Ethiopia’s royal capital in the 17th and 18th centuries, recognized for its historical importance and well-preserved castles and palaces that showcase the country’s imperial heritage. While tourist destination loyalty has been extensively studied in the past two decades, there is a lack of empirical research on the predictive determinants influencing tourist loyalty to heritage destinations within an integrated framework. To bridge this gap, this study investigates the relationship between predictive determinants and tourist loyalty to heritage destinations in Gondar City. Applying explanatory design, quantitative data was collected through questionnaires from 450 conveniently selected tourists who visited Gondar between September 2024 and January 2025 and analyzed using SmartPLS 4. Findings indicate that perceived risk and tourist satisfaction significantly influence tourist loyalty to heritage destinations, whereas tourist motivation, destination image, perceived value, and memorable tourism experiences do not. The proposed model exhibits a satisfactory fit because the measurement model shows indicator loadings ≥ 0.708, composite reliability ≥ 0.70, convergent validity ≥ 0.50, and discriminant validity ≤ 0.85, and the structural model reveals the coefficient of determination (R² = 0.224), and the path model showed positive predictive relevance (Q² > 0) for all indicators except BLY3 and BLY5. The findings also demonstrate that perceived risk (0.127) and tourist satisfaction (0.038) have small effect sizes (f2) on tourist loyalty to heritage destinations, while other factors exhibit even lower effect sizes (f2). Yet importantly, the overall findings are valuable for academics, tourism planners, policymakers, and destination managers.
Workie et al. (Thu,) studied this question.