Elements influence international tourists’ satisfaction

Article history: Received: February 16, 2020 Received in revised format: March 27 2020 Accepted: March 29, 2020 Available online: April 1, 2020 This study attempted to identify decisive factors having important impacts on international tourists’ satisfaction in Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC). By conducting a survey of 2,073 foreign visitors in HCMC, this paper explored nine determinants and their effect levels on international tourists’ destination satisfaction. Quantitative approach was mainly applied with statistical techniques used as exploratory factor, reliability, and multiple regressions analyses. The result indicated that eight out of nine factors significantly affect international tourists’ satisfaction. The nine determinants of foreign tourists’ satisfaction include cultural and historical attraction, tourist service infrastructure, local cuisine, safety and security, entertainment, destination image, negative attributes, perceived price, and natural environment; in which destination image had the strongest effect on satisfaction of international tourists in HCMC. These findings provide practical implications for practitioners, policy makers, and Department of Tourism HCMC.


Introduction
Tourism industry is worldwide considered as crucial factor in economic system (Elain & Siti, 2014;Mihalic, 2002). Specifically, tourism had a significant growth rate (Adinegara, 2018;Fourie & Santana, 2011;Haarhoff & De Klerk, 2019;Pantouvakis, 2013;World Tourism Organisation, 2012) and sustainable tourism had sustainable development for national economy (Jones & Haven-Tang, 2005). Bonn, Joseph, and Dai (2005) mentioned this industry belonged to the group of industries having the highest income; and Haber and Lerner (1998) mentioned its impact on employment. In combination with confirmation of economic, environmental and sociocultural effects of the industry (Haarhoff & De Klerk, 2019;Ranjbarian & Pool, 2015); tourism industry played important role in building sustainability (Elkington, 1997). Significantly, tourism industry had an impact on other industries, which were retail, transportation, construction (Hui, Wan, and Ho, 2007); hotels, restaurants, crafts, and transportation (Sulistyadi et al., 2019); real estate; and equity. Both real estate and equity were indirectly impacted by tourism industry. According to Jayawardena (2002), tourism depended on the ability to respond to changing; specifically, the change in international visitors' demands. The changing and unpredictability could become the difficulties for people relating to tourism industry. Other challenges were indicated by Le (2007), competitive environment, unpredictability, low standard of living of residents, natural resources crisis, low quality facility, shortage in financial investment, low skill in management, lack of comprehension and integration. According to The Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Report 2013 (Blanke & Chiesa, 2013), from 2011 to 2013, Vietnam remained its 80th position. Among 140 countries, Vietnam's tourism ranked first one-third in terms of price competitiveness, natural resources, and cultural resources. However, Tourism in Vietnam ranked 110th or more in the prioritisation of travel and tourism, and environmental sustainability. tolerable, and the deserved. Regarding perceived performance, Chi (2011) summarised the definition of Cadotte, Woodruff, and Jenkins (1987), which was the beliefs about product attributes, levels of attributes, or outcomes. Even though expectation, experienced-based norms, desires/ideals, and equity were seen as the standards to compare satisfaction (Halstead, 1999; cited by Chi, 2011); this paper truly saw that those factors could be helpful to fulfil the cognitive sector of satisfaction. When considering the expectation of tourist, the expectation could be formed by the previous experience of tourists, desires and equity. Besides, the expectation could be seen from the formation of background of country of origin of tourists. Regarding affective satisfaction, this side emphasised on emotion, inner mind states, and psychological term (De Rojas and Camarero, 2008). From an emotional and psychological perspective, there were several definitions clarifying affective sides was that main component of satisfaction. Earlier, in 1980, tourist satisfaction was defined as the combination of affirmative emotion and awareness after attending recreational activities (Beard & Ragheb, 1980). In 1985, World Tourism Organisation (WTO) gathered feeling and pleasure to psychological concept, which was the result from experiencing activities that tourists expect to experience. This idea of WTO was supported by Assaker et al. (2011). In general, those definitions regarded emotion as the later stage of experiencing the service; apart from aforementioned researches, there were researches of Baker and Crompton (2000); Huang, Weiler, and Assaker (2015); Ko (1998); and Otto and Ritchie (2000). Expectation and Perceived Service or Expectancy Disconfirmation Model was firstly discovered by Cardozo (1965) and then by Hunt (1977). This concept was then developed and became well-known with the investigation of Oliver (1980). The definition of Oliver (1980) was similar to the definition of affective side of satisfaction, which was the difference between expectations and perceived performance. Therefore, it could be concluded that this model was a subset of Cognitive-Affective Model. There was a confirmation of the relationship of those two models, but Expectancy Disconfirmation Model was considered as the next stage of Cognitive-Affective model (Bosque and Martin, 2008). Besides, they were not completely separate. Noticeably, this concept was widely applied (Barky, 1992;Huh & Uysal 2003;Pizam & Milman 1993;Weber, 1997). However, this theory has been criticised (Chi, 2011;Yuksel &Rimmington 1998). Apart from the definition of Oliver, there were some definitions mentioning about the difference between before travelling and after travelling (Bigne, Andreu and Gnoth, 2005;Churchill & Surprenant, 1982;Lounsbury & Polik, 1992;Pizam, Neumann, and Reichel 1978). Three-Factor Satisfaction Model included three factors: basic factors, excitement factors, and performance factors. First, basic factors were the base, if those factors did not exist, there would be dissatisfaction. Second, the absence of excitement factors did not increase dissatisfaction; with the presence of those factors, satisfaction would be increased. Third, performance factors had a positive relation with satisfaction and a negative relation with dissatisfaction. Attribution Model mentioned the evaluation of tourists based on components or attributes that tourists experienced. Mostly, all attributes based on the cognitive side of satisfaction and ignored the elements of emotion and psychology. Interestingly, there was a concept named Overall Satisfaction, which was defined as "an overall evaluation based on the total purchase and consumption experience with a good or service over time" (Anderson, Fornell, and Lehmann, 1994. p. 54). Overall, it could be seen that Expectancy Disconfirmation Model, Three-Factor Satisfaction Model, and Attribution Model mainly focused on the cognitive side of Cognitive-Attribute Model. This paper truly considered the existence of tourists' emotions; therefore, it was reasonable to follow Cognitive-Attribute Model. Aforementioned theories ignore the elements of international tourists. Therefore, in general, this study defined international tourists' satisfaction as a combination of emotion, attitude, and logical evaluation. Those three factors could be seen during the process of before and after experiencing tourists service of international tourists.

Existing Theories
Perceived value, Destination Image, and Quality were all seen as prerequisites in various papers. In 2014, Ruizz-Molina and Gil-Saura mentioned that the combination of image and service quality affected the perceived value, which later affected satisfaction of tourists. In 2013, Veasna, Wu, and Huang considered destination source credibility, destination image, and destination attachment as predictors of destination satisfaction in the context of famous world heritage tourism destination and famous skyscraper. Destination source credibility impacted on destination image; both destination source credibility and destination image were antecedents of destination attachment, which would later affect destination satisfaction. The study of Herstanti, Suhud, and Wibowo (2014) focused on Indonesia tourists in travel destination -Sydney, it tested the direct impact of tour's quality, perceived value, and destination image on tourist satisfaction. In Malaysia, the three earlier factors and tourist expectation were used to predict tourist satisfaction (Aliman et al., 2014). Apart from those common factors, there would be other indicators. Regarding the context of Barcelona hotel in tourism industry, Decarlos et al. (2018) tested the customer satisfaction based on cultural proximity, linguistic accommodation, expectations and language attitudes. This study used an interdisciplinary approach and Content Analysis; confirmed the importance of country of origin since it impacted evaluations. Regarding the context of spa, Perić et al. (2018) concerned the impact of employee satisfaction on tourist satisfaction through service quality. This study was conducted in Republic of Serbia. Approaching to other context -gambling destination, Xu et al. (2018) tested the relation between staying overnight in casino Macau and tourist satisfaction. Other study also conducted based on casino was of Mayer et al. (1998). Apart from spa, hotel, and casino, there were researches on tour packages, travel agencies, and travel destinations. In 2013, the paper "The Determinants of Satisfaction of tourists Attractions' Visitors" of Nowacki emphasised on subject-related (visitors' features) and object-related (attraction features). By clarifying demography, backgrounds of visitors; and the characteristics of travel destination; this study linked those factors with satisfaction. This element was frequently ignored by various papers, however, this study ignored other factors such as behaviours, emotions, perception of tourists affecting satisfaction like many other researches. In accordance with emotion, mood, and pleasure; those were used to enrich tourist satisfaction. In heritage context, the pleasure and arousal factors were seen as indicators of satisfaction (De Rojas & Camarero, 2008). In the subset of tourism wellness -yoga, the importance of emotion in satisfaction was highlighted (Sharma and Nayak, 2018). Applying confirmatory factor analysis, structural equation modelling and doing survey on domestic tourists in India, they concluded that emotion had positive relation with overall image and satisfaction. Significantly, there were a variety of papers examining those factors with satisfaction: the ease of access, ticket issue, level and variety of prices, services, and safety (Mazanec, 2006); food, shopping, attractions, activities, environment, accessibility, price, culture, climate, nature, lifestyle, history, service, facility, hygiene, nightlife, language, and monetary value (Chi and Qu, 2008); food, menu diversity, cleanliness, atmosphere, noise level, speed, price, value, and facilities (Liu and Jang, 2009); social-ecological factors and ecotourist (Torres-Sovero et al., 2012); cost, hospitality, attractions, accessibility, and infrastructure in Thailand (Suanmali, 2014); facility and safety, tourist guide's appearance, price, quality of fooddrink services in Tien Giang, Vietnam (Luu, 2014). All of those elements were separately considered, in this paper, the nine dimensions would generalise and include elements to examine the influence on satisfaction, especially international tourists' satisfaction. Importantly, the paper examined and compared the level of contribution of each element. Looking satisfaction at broader views, satisfaction was tested under the combination of SERVQUAL and QFD quality management technique according to three case studies (Liu, 2006). The concept of overall satisfaction was seen regarding satisfaction and dissatisfaction (Alegre & Garau, 2010). With the development of the Internet, the paper "Why do online tourists need sellers' ratings? Exploration of the factors affecting regretful tourist e-satisfaction" of Tseng (2017) considered e-satisfaction in Taiwanese tourism industry.

Conceptual Framework
In order to obtain all the objectives and further analyses, this study hypothesises that:

H1: Culture, history, and art attractions positively affect tourists' satisfaction.
Historical attractions grouped locations such as "palace, monument, museum, temple, religious place, historical building" (Khobkun, 2005, p.3). Cultural attractions included floating market, gallery, (Pongsatorn, 1988); while art attractions included exhibitions, museum, theatres. Overall, those three factors were not distinguished clearly, since travel attractions consisted the elements of history, culture, and art. These three factors attracted tourists with national cultural difference (Pizam & Fleischer, 2005); inspired tourists with the willingness to learn cerebral experience, to share, and to experience the past. In HCMC, there are War Remnants Museum, Cu Chi Tunnels, Saigon Central Post Office, Notre Dame Cathedral, Independence Palace, Jade Emperor Pagoda, and Saigon Opera House. Those locations contain the meaning of history, represent Vietnam's culture, and the art. The connection between historical, cultural, and art attractions and satisfaction was proved by Huang and Crotts (2019); and Sofield and Li (1998). However, Zhao, Zhang, and Tian (2018) found that historical and cultural relics have no significant impact on international tourists' satisfaction. Because of this disparity, it was necessary to learn and test the relationship in order to strengthen previous papers.

H2: Safety and security positively affect tourists' satisfaction.
Safety and security played important role in the tourist industry. Many studies indicated safety and security as a prerequisite for prosperous tourist businesses (George, 2003;Sirakaya, Sheppard, McLennan, 1997;cited by Yuksel and Yuksel, 2007) and as a decisive factor of travel decision (Sönmez and Graefe, 1998). Significantly, safety and security had an impact on satisfaction regarding shopping sector (Sonmez and Graefe, 1998;Yuksel and Yuksel, 2007), had direct and indirect impact on satisfaction (Martin and Bosqu, 2008), and had an impact on travel pleasure (Roehl and Fesenmaier, 1992). Contradict concept of safety and security was risk, which was a barrier to the tourism industry since the industry was vulnerable and sensitive to any risks (Guo et al., 2013). By listing types of risks, it was easy to clarify factors weakening safety and security. A long stream of papers conceptualised various kinds of risk (Tsaur, Tzeng, and Wang, 1997). Mostly, those listed risks were financial risks, physical risk, psychological risk, and social risk (Roehl & Fesenmaier, 1992;Moutinho, 1987;Moven and Minor, 2009). The physical risk could be clearer when Selin and Myers (1998) divided risks with natural disasters. This study focused on macro risks and micro risks. Macro risks indicated risks belonging to political environment, economy, tourists' protected laws and legislations, and natural disasters. At micro levels, risks would be health risk; crime such as robbery and terrorist attacks; financial risks such as fluctuation in exchange rate, availability of credit and debit service, QR code payment (Lou, Tian, and Koh, 2017); social risk; and psychological risk.

H 4 : Negative attributes negatively affect tourists' satisfaction.
In tourism industry, negative factors related to tourists' overall satisfaction (Chung and Hoffman, 1998;Petrick, Tonner, Quinn, 2006;and Truong, 2005). Satisfaction and dissatisfaction were not considered as contradict concept. Some negative elements would generate dissatisfaction. Therefore, some negative elements did not mean negatively affect satisfaction (Kano, 1984). There were a wide range of types of negative factors. Alegre and Garau (2010, p.57) divided negative attributes of previous papers into two groups. The first one included "too much construction, street prostitution, industrial pollution in the resort, queues and waits for services, shortage of certain food or drink, power failures". The second included "crowds at tourist attractions, too many beggars and vendors in the street, no public toilets, trouble getting money with a credit card, having to be careful with what you eat or drink, trouble changing money, pollution in the cities, slow customs clearance". Equipment and conditional problems such as broken vehicles, bad weather (Fuchs and Arie, 2006) was added to negative attributes. This study emphasised on specific negative attributes based on HCMC's conditions. According to infrastructure, HCMC has had crowds and dangerous traffic, many beggars and street vendors, and tricksters. On the street, many beggars and tricksters not only the domestic poor, but also the foreigners. Noticeably, street vendors could be seen as negative attributes, but sometimes could be seen as cultural elements attracting international travellers. The quality of environment was added, especially air pollution due to traffic congestion. The availability of tour maps, and public toilet facilities was considered. Besides, being careful when eating and drinking and language barrier were also the negative attributes. Those determinants were negative sides of other eight factors earlier mentioned to test causal relationship with international tourists' satisfaction.

H5: Perceived price positively affects tourists' satisfaction.
Perceived price was subset of perceived value, it is necessary to focus on perceived value first. A long stream of empirical studies in tourism and hospitality considered perceived value as an important determinant of visitors' satisfaction (Chen and Chen, 2010;Gallarza and Gil Saura, 2006;Hume and Mort, 2010;Kim, Kim, Goh, 2011;Lai, Griffin, Babin, 2009;Sun, Chi, Xu, 2013). Perceived value was a multidimensional construct. Sweeney and Soutar (2001) grouped types of perceived value in four groups, including social value, emotional value, performance quality and value of money. Apart from emotional value, performance quality, and value of money; Petrick (2002) had other groups, named behavioural price and reputation. Therefore, previous papers added monetary element in perceived value. Perceived price can be conceptualised following concept of perceived value. Perceived price could be defined as the perception of tourists in terms of price when they receiving specific service, the perception relied on tourists' factors and external factors. While income, background, and travel experience were seen as tourists' factors; service quality, value, benefits, and price of substitutes and rivals were seen as external factors. The comparison of prices among different sellers was also highlighted by Chen, Gupta, and Rom (1994). Because of those above elements, actual price of products and price in tourists' thought sometime were not identical. The difference between these could generate satisfaction, if actual price was lower than or equal to perceived price. The linkage between perceived price and satisfaction was tested by Oh (2000) and Oliver (1997). Since price is sensitive to a part of tourists, therefore, it is necessary to put this element under this study.

H6: Natural environment positively affects tourists' satisfaction.
Environment generally was defined with multiple elements (Suanmali, 2014) and was investigated in terms of relationship with satisfaction (Jarvis, Stoeckl, and Liu, 2016). Interestingly, environment connected with psychological status (Ryu and Jang, 2007), pleasure (Buultjens et al., 2005), and attitude (Bitner, 1992). The importance of environment when doing business in tourism industry embedded in various areas. It was highlighted by World Tourism Organisation-UNEP (1998,2002); Ibrahim and Gill (2005); and Law on Tourism -09/2017/QH14 (2017). For this reason, natural environment, which belongs to environment also plays important role in tourism. Natural environment associated with nature-based tourism such as "ecotourism, green travel" (Lee, 2009, p.). It is crucial when Can Gio in HCMC provides ecotourism in mangrove forest (Nguyen et al., 2006). This study would gather elements such as air, lighting, noise (Berlin and Martin, 2004;Gifford, 1997;Luz, 2005), smell, hygiene (Mai, 2018;Oh, 2000) safety, and beauty of the scenery (Mai, 2018), weather, variety of natural attractions, and relaxing atmosphere.

H7: Infrastructure positively affects tourists' satisfaction.
In international tourism system, infrastructure was crucial factor (Culpan, 1987) and tourism industry depended on infrastructure (Crouch and Ritchie, 2000). It acted as the connection among travel destinations (Panasiuk, 2007). Importantly, the strong connection between infrastructure and travellers' satisfaction was mentioned by various studies (Buhalis, 2000;Crouch and Ritchie, 2000;Diana, 2012). Infrastructure was seen in terms of transportation networks, including road, rail, sea, and air. First, moving by road was the most common in HCMC and was the combination of traditional taxi service (offline), modern taxi service (online), motorcycle, cars, public transport. Second, travelling by rail was common when moving among travel destinations belong to HCMC, with low price. Third, travelling by sea not only acted as a mean of transport but also a solution for entertainment. Finally, air travelling was important since visitors approached air service first when they entered Vietnam, specifically HCMC. All transportation networks aforementioned must continuously improved regarding safety, quality, cleanliness, and availability. Those elements safety (Suanmali, 2014), quality, cleanliness of facilities, bus stations, fuel stations, vehicles, roads (Tran, 2011) must be improved to satisfy international visitors. According to availability, there were emphasis on maps, hotline, travel agents to help visitors when they are travelling. Besides, availability of banks and healthcare institutions acted as supporters for visitors during travelling time. This study focused on all elements above to examine the relationship between infrastructure and satisfaction.

H8: Destination image positively affects tourists' satisfaction.
Many researches emphasised that destination image as important indicator of tourist satisfaction (Lee, Lee, and Lee, 2005;Prayag, 2009). Regarding definition, destination image was tourists' beliefs, feelings, knowledge, and perception of specific travel destination (Baloglu & McCleary, 1999;Crompton, 1979). The perception can be seen as visitors' expectation in terms of benefits and consumption values (Tapachai & Waryszak, 2000). Lawson and Band-Bovy (1977) divided destination image into two categories. The first one was cognitive component, which was perception of physical attributes; while the second one was affective, which was personal feelings for destinations (Bigne et al., 2001;Tasci, Gartner, and Cavusgil, 2007). Alhemoud and Armstrong (1996); and Gallarza, Saura, and Garcıá (2002) added other category -overall or global image, which was combined by the two earlier mentioned categories (Pike and Ryan, 2004;cited by Yap, Ahmad, and Zhu, 2018). Destination image contained the term "uniqueness", which indicated distinctive characteristics among similar travel destinations (Qu, Kim, and Im, 2011). This factor could create memorable travel experience and satisfy visitors (Kim, 2014). In this study, destination image was tested with three categories and with uniqueness of HCMC. The causal relationship of destination image and satisfaction was proved, but the degree of importance among other determinants should be tested.

H9: Recreations and entertainments positively affect tourists' satisfaction.
According to Akintunde (2001), recreations were defined as activities providing people with pleasure. In tourism context, those activities included sightseeing, shopping, and adventure activities (Beerli and Martin, 2004). Regarding Hughes (2000); and Hughes and Allen (2008); entertainments included activities relating to dance, music, shows, and movies. Generally, recreations and entertainments consisted of nature-related activities, shopping, and special events. First, nature-related activities mentioned sightseeing, scuba-diving, snorkelling, kayaking, ziplining, and trekking. Second, shopping has been investigated by many papers and has been considered as the oldest activities (Murphy et al., 2011); it can be considered in terms of fashion, and specialty. Mostly those above activities of shopping was in the daytime; nowadays, there is development of nightlife with night markets. Nightlife was also added to tourist leisure and entertainment (Tran, 2011). Third, Le (2007) mentioned special events in entertainment activities; in this paper, those were sport events; musical performances; and Meetings, Incentives, Conferencing, Exhibitions (MICE). Sport events could be sport matches such as SEA Games, HCMC Television Cycling Tournament, and regional and worldwide soccer competitions. MICE has been highlighted by Le (2007) and Vietnamese government (2011) in "Strategy on Viet Nam's tourism development until 2020, vision to 2030". Besides, special events also included cultural events such as Tet calligraphy markets, and international dragon dance festivals. Among those elements, shopping had higher priority than other activities (Jensen, 2012) and was proved to have positive relationship with overall satisfaction (Middaugh et al., 2013). The causal relationship between overall recreations, entertainments and tourist satisfaction was proved by studies (Mai, 2018;Mai and Pham, 2015). In this paper, there are some new elements adding to recreations and entertainments with the aim of testing connection with satisfaction and the degree of importance in comparison with other factors.

Questionnaire Design, Data Collection, and Measurement Scale
In this study, questionnaire was applied to identify perquisites of international tourists' satisfaction in HCMC. Regarding the content, the questionnaire contained all elements indicating literature reviews, which were the nine independent variables and one dependent variables -international tourists' satisfaction. The questionnaire was designed in the form of statements with 5-point Likert scale. The scale of measurement indicated five scales, ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). The constructed questionnaires were directly delivered 2073 international tourists in HCMC.

Factor Analysis and Reliability
In this part, Exploratory Factor Analysis would be seen in terms of Barlett's Test of Sphericity, Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin Measure of Sampling Adequacy (KMO), Kaiser's criterion, and Cronbach's coefficients. Bartlett's Test of Sphericity of both dependent variable and the nine independent variables were 0, which was significant and highlighted sufficient correlation. According to Pallenat (2007), the data was proved to be suitable for analysis. Specifically, the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin Measure of Sampling Adequacy (KMO) of dependent variable-International tourists' satisfaction was 0.781, while that of the nine independent variables was 0.896. Those two KMO were significant since the value must be at least 0.6. The results showed that factor analysis was appropriate. Regarding Kaiser's criterion, among the 5 components of tourist satisfaction, there was one component recording eigenvalue more than 1. This component explained 52.184 percent of the variance. The nine independent variables had 9 components recording eigenvalue greater than 1. Those 9 components explained 60.679 percent of variance. As shown in Table 1 and  Table 2, Cronbach's coefficients in both types of variables ranged from 0.652 to 0.825, which indicating good level of reliability.  Fig. 1 illustrates the respondents' characteristics. Regarding gender, the number of males was higher than that of females, accounting for 52.2%. There were six age categories, most respondents were at the age from 18 to 25, and at the age from 26 to 30, with 24.7% and 24.1%, respectively. The majority of foreign tourists in HCMC were from Asia (44.9%), and followed by Europe (29.2%). According to educational level, bachelor degree's proportion was the highest, with 37.5%; and master degree's percentage was the second highest, with 20.1%. Related to purpose of visiting, more than haft of respondents came to HCMC for leisure. Meanwhile, the frequency of first time was the highest, with 59.1%.

Discussions and Recommendations
The study was conducted with the aim of investigating the effect of the nine independent variables on international tourists' satisfaction and the level of importance of each element; then, the paper gave recommendations based on the result. Regarding the framework, there were eight out of nine indicators together creating the formation of international tourists' satisfaction. Among the eight components, the result indicated that DEMA (β = .197) was the strongest contributor of international tourists' satisfaction. As mentioned earlier, destination image played important role in predicting the satisfaction. However, normally this factor was examined under the context with perceived value, quality. In this paper, this element was tested with other factors. By doing this research, it could be concluded that destination image not only has long been positively affected satisfaction with other factors (perceived value, quality) but also has been clarified as the most crucial factor in comparison with other eight factors. The study shed light on theoretical development and confirmation. As mentioned earlier, destination image in this study composed of three factors and uniqueness. The three factors included cognitive, affective and the combination of cognitive and affective. The confirmation of the importance level of destination image strengthened the satisfaction concept, which were the Cognitive-Affective Model. As a result, this could be seen as the linkage between destination image and satisfaction with the impact of Cognitive-Affective Model. Through this connection, Cognitive-Affective Model would become more important in studies about satisfaction in tourism industry. Destination image was firstly the combination of physical and emotional attributes; which suggested policy makers, and Department of Tourism HCMC with general ideas, and without detail information. However, it could be seen that the emotional and physical components came from the attitude, behaviour of employees; quality; and the great combination of other indicators in this study: Cultural and Historical Attractions, Tourist Service Infrastructure, Local Cuisine, Safety and Security, Entertainments, Destination Image, Negative Attributes, and Perceived Price. Those factors together could build great destination image for HCMC. Besides, the research and development and allocation of investments could be based on the level of contribution to international tourists' satisfaction. Importantly, the requirement in changing attitude and behaviour of employees could be the strong force for people in tourism industry to improve their weakness, which was clarified by previous studies. The uniqueness of Destination Image was a strong force to encourage people to create and pioneer in sector of tourism in HCMC rather than copying and developing the same concepts of other travel destinations.

Conclusion and Implications
The study included nine independent factors, including Cultural and Historical Attractions, Tourist Service Infrastructure, Local Cuisine, Safety and Security, Entertainments, Destination Image, Negative Attributes, Perceived Price, and Natural Environment with the aim of testing their effects on international tourists' satisfaction in HCMC and the level of importance of each dimension. By conducting surveys, getting 2073 responses of international tourists in HCMC, and running hypothesis regression; the finding of study mentioned the greatest contribution of Destination Image among the nine indicators and no contribution of the indicator -Natural Environment. According to the results, there would be the recommendation for further researches in Destination Image, Cognitive-Affective Model, and Satisfaction; the confirmation of destination among various indicators of satisfaction; and the strong force and suggestions for people joining tourism industry in HCMC.