Does a Destination have Personality? Personality and Image Issues of a Destination

Brand is a perceptual instrument and each affective value of the product (tourism destination) reflects the brand’s impact on customer. Despite the importance of brand image in terms of marketing, much ambiguity rise in relation to its relationship with brand personality. While branding issues of goods and services are well examined in marketing studies, the application of branding techniques to places, especially to tourism destinations are still new. The purpose of this study is to explain the effects of the destination personality on destination image, and to fullfil the gap in the tourism literature about destination personality concept. This study, on the other hand, was developed for a particular destination to describe the destination’s personality factors related to destination brand image. The study was hold in Didim as a growing destination in Turkey. The questionnaire was processed with simple descriptive analysis (frequency), simple correlation analysis and one-way ANOVA test. Consequently, three important destination personality elements (conviviality dimension) were defined and this three elements’ relationships with all cognitive image elements and two affective image elements were significant. Also, these elements had some statistical significant differences with some sociodemographic factors.