The Effects of Destination Personality on Tourist Satisfaction, Identification, and Behaviour

Abstract

As new tourism destinations continuously appear and established ones develop or decline, destination marketers face the daunting task of reaching out to consumers in an increasingly competitive global marketplace. To market destinations and attract first-time and repeat visitors, tourism managers need to apply modern branding techniques and effective positioning strategies. Findings in the marketing literature suggest brand personality, satisfaction, and customer identification with the brand are important drivers of consumer behavior in several contexts. Yet, there is a paucity of studies on their role in tourist behavior. In an attempt to address this shortcoming in the extant literature, the present study develops and tests a model linking destination personality and tourist–destination identification with the tourism mantras of tourist satisfaction, positive word-of-mouth, and revisit intentions. Data from consumers reporting on their most recently visit to a tourism destination are analyzed via structural equation modeling. The study results indicate that (1) destination personality can be portrayed in terms of the established characteristics excitement, sophistication, and ruggedness and the novel ones activeness, dependability, and philoxenia; (2) destination personality promotes tourist satisfaction, tourist–destination identification, positive word-of-mouth, and revisit intentions; (3) satisfaction encourages identification and word-of-mouth; and (4) identification enhances word-of-mouth and revisit intentions. Overall, the findings attest to the importance of tourist satisfaction given its role as chief predictor of tourist–destination identification and promoting and its indirect effects on revisit intentions via identification. Also, our results suggest destination personality constitutes a viable metaphor for understanding tourists’ perceptions of destinations, building destination brands, and crafting a unique tourism destination identity. Finally, tourist-destination identification seems to fulfil a self-definitional need and provide tourists with emotional returns; it can thus enhance understanding of tourist behavior.