Tourist Perceptions of Infrastructure Adequacy and Facility Satisfaction in the Mountain Tourism City of Skardu Gilgit Baltistan Pakistan
This study validates a four-dimensional model of urban facility satisfaction to demonstrate that hospitality infrastructure and attraction assets are the primary drivers of tourist satisfaction in Skardu, Pakistan, providing planners with a diagnostic tool to prioritize infrastructure investments amidst rapid tourism-driven urbanization.
Original paper licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). This is an AI-generated explanation of the paper below. It is not written or endorsed by the authors. For technical accuracy, refer to the original paper. Read full disclaimer
In the high, rugged peaks of the Karakoram range, a specific kind of city is growing. These are not industrial hubs built on factories or migration, but towns that expand because people come to see the mountains. When a place like this grows, it faces a unique challenge: the buildings that welcome visitors, such as hotels and restaurants, can be built quickly by private owners, but the invisible systems that keep a city running—like trash collection, clean water, safety patrols, and reliable internet—require slow, coordinated public planning. This gap between what visitors expect and what the city can actually provide is the central puzzle for planners in these remote, high-altitude destinations. If the city cannot manage the flow of people, the very beauty that draws them there can be ruined by overcrowding and poor services. Understanding exactly which parts of a city's infrastructure matter most to a traveler is the only way to fix these problems without wasting limited resources.
Researchers set out to solve this puzzle in Skardu, the main gateway city for tourists in Pakistan's Gilgit-Baltistan region. Sitting at an elevation of roughly 2,228 meters, Skardu has seen its hotel capacity double in just a few years, driven by private investment, while the public systems supporting those hotels have struggled to keep up. To understand how visitors feel about this rapid change, a team of researchers from Tokyo Metropolitan University and Government College University in Pakistan surveyed 400 tourists at eleven different sites across the city and its surrounding wilderness. They did not just ask general questions about whether people were happy; they built a precise, scientific tool to measure satisfaction across four specific areas: the natural and cultural attractions, the quality of hotels and food, the management of public services like sanitation and safety, and the convenience of amenities like parking and banking.
The team started with a long list of sixty-five potential questions derived from existing research and then tested them with the tourists. Through a careful process of analysis, they narrowed this list down to twenty-four key questions that best captured the essence of the visitor experience. They then used these questions to test a model of how different parts of the city contribute to a tourist's overall satisfaction. The results revealed a clear hierarchy of what matters most to people. The strongest driver of satisfaction was the hospitality infrastructure—the quality of the rooms, the friendliness of the staff, the value for money, and the availability of clean drinking water and good food. This factor was the most influential, suggesting that the private sector's rapid expansion in accommodation and dining has successfully met the core needs of travelers. The second most important factor was the attraction assets themselves: the mountains, lakes, wildlife, and cultural heritage that bring people to the region in the first place.
While the natural beauty and the hotels were the primary reasons visitors were satisfied, the study found that the city's public management and convenience features still played a significant, though smaller, role. The way the city managed sanitation, waste, safety, and emergency services, as well as the availability of amenities like internet, shopping, and parking, contributed independently to how happy tourists felt. Even though these public systems were not the top priority for visitors, their absence or poor quality still lowered overall satisfaction scores. This finding is crucial because it shows that while tourists are willing to overlook some imperfections in a remote mountain town, they still notice when basic city functions fail. The researchers also checked if these feelings changed based on who the tourist was. They found that satisfaction levels were consistent regardless of whether the visitor was from Pakistan or another country, their gender, their income, or their level of education. This means that the city's infrastructure problems affect everyone equally, and improvements would benefit the entire visitor base rather than just a specific group.
The study concludes that Skardu is currently a place where the private sector has successfully built the "face" of the city, but the public sector is struggling to build the "backbone." The most effective path forward for city planners is to continue supporting the high-quality hospitality services that visitors love, while simultaneously investing in the public systems that are currently lagging. By prioritizing sanitation, waste management, safety, and connectivity, the city can protect the very assets that draw people there. The researchers have also provided a validated, twenty-four-question tool that local authorities can use again and again to track progress over time. This allows them to see exactly where the gaps are and measure whether new investments are actually making a difference for the people who come to see the mountains. In a region where tourism is growing faster than the city's ability to manage it, this kind of clear, evidence-based understanding is the first step toward a sustainable future.
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