Transformative destination attractiveness: an exploration of salient attributes, consequences, and personal values

ABSTRACT

Despite travel’s potential to transform individuals, literature suggests a lapse in how its attractiveness is portrayed in marketing efforts. Adding to this is the lack of research on destination characteristics that trigger transformations and travellers’ perceptions of transformative destinations. Using the Repertory Test with Laddering Analysis, underpinned by Personal Construct Theory, this article proposes that transformative destination attractiveness lies in the meaningfulness of attributes to travellers, rather than in the attributes themselves. This is because, when considering transformations, attractiveness is driven by travellers’ perceptions of a destination’s enduring impact on them. Findings indicate an alternate destination positioning opportunity as well.

KEYWORDS:

• Transformative travel
• transformation
• transformative tourism research
• destination attractiveness
• destination image
• personal values
• destination positioning
• repertory test
• laddering analysis
• Covid-19

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Ethics approval details

This study obtained ethics approval from Queensland University of Technology (QUT) Human Research Ethics Committee (UHREC), QUT, Australia and the reference number is 2,000,000,586.