Measurement of destination personality: an updated literature review

Abstract

Destination branding has been an extensively investigated idea as governments and corporations seek to reposition their respective destinations' images in the mainstream sphere. Many areas of destination branding are researched; not only for the purpose of branding or rebranding locations, but also to stimulate local economies. The purpose of this study is to obtain information about destination personality from the literature accessible in research sources. Based on the citation indices and downloads from digital sites and libraries, this research picked 28 noteworthy papers on the issue that were published in the recent 12 years, and then conducted the analysis on them. This review paper presents the findings of previous researches and the approaches used therein. The findings reveals that 42-item BPSof (Aaker, 1997) were used to measure destination personality. However, the most noticeable dimensions of destination personality based on which human characteristics are attributed to the destination are sincerity, excitement and conviviality and researchers used these dimensions are most commonly to measure destination personality. These noticeable dimensions of destination personality sincerity and excitement were found to be two main dimensions and conviviality is newly specific to destination. Researchers, marketers, and government officials might benefit from an increased understanding of notions of destination personality and its implications in tourism, which could lead to adjustments and improvements in the branding of tourist, business, and other kinds of destinations. Hence, it is essential to emphasise that this paper is only a qualitative evaluation of the literature and therefore confined to the results of prior research in this area.