Getting Closely Attached to It: The Role of Destination Personality and Emotional Experience in tourists’ Attachment to a Tourist Destination

ABSTRACT

The main focus of this research was to explore the relationships between tourists’ emotional experience, destination personality, place attachment, satisfaction, and destination loyalty within the same research framework. The research was conducted among 304 Serbian tourists who visited the coastal destination in Greece (Paralia). The results confirmed that destination personality positively shaped place attachment while negatively shaping tourists’ satisfaction and destination loyalty. Also, both satisfaction and emotional experience were found to positively influence place attachment. Moreover, results highlighted the role of destination personality as the mediator of the relationship between emotional experience and loyalty. Practical implications will be discussed further.

KEYWORDS:

• Emotional experience
• destination personality
• place attachment
• tourist satisfaction
• destination loyalty
• coastal tourist destination

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by The Science Fund of the Republic of Serbia, Project No. 7739076, Tourism Destination Competitiveness - evaluation model for Serbia -TOURCOMSERBIA

Disclosure Statement

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