selected assessments. In addition, unobtrusive observation was
carried out with regards to the Chinese travel agents’ services in
China. During this process, the researcher was only an observer
who neither commented on nor participated in the actual service.
Null hypotheses were developed, regarding no significant
difference between the travel agents’ and destination suppliers’
views on the Goldfields’ overall tourism development potential
with respect to the Chinese market and the importance of the
selected items for its future development.
Kolmogorov–Smirnov (K-S) tests were run using the SPSS
package to test the above hypotheses, which according to Siegel
(1956), can be used when the number of cases is less than 20 and
the data are non-categorical. This test was chosen for the analysis
because it is argued to be more powerful than the Chi-square test
when used for small samples and its ‘power efficiency’, compared
to the difference of means t-test, can be as high as 96% (Siegel,
1956). A critical value of P ¼0.05 was used to determine the
statistical significance of the results. In addition, a study of the
responses to the relevant open questions was conducted, to
explore potential reasons for the statistical findings.