Personality and image as predictors of the intention to revisit and recommend tourist destinations

Undeniably, the new normality caused by COVID-19 presents an enormous challenge for tourist destinations to become more attractive to visitors. Thus, the purpose of this study is to analyze the impact of destination personality and image on tourist behavior in Peru. This quantitative and cross-sectional analysis targeted 998 national tourists via a non-probabilistic convenience sampling. The study employed AMOS 24 statistical software for exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. The results showed positive effects of social innovativeness (β = 0.374), performance (β = 0.404), and honesty (β = 0.191) on an affective image. Likewise, the study confirms the favorable effects of social innovativeness (β = 0.524), performance (β = 0.156), and honesty (β = 0.280) on a cognitive image. Furthermore, the effects of a cognitive image on the intention to revisit (β = -0.756) and intention to recommend (β = -0.756) are also measured. In addition, the findings support the positive effects of an affective image in intention to revisit (β = 1.549) and intention to recommend (β = 1.547); all results obtained a significance less than 0.05 (p < 0.001). This study concludes that brand personality is a valuable concept that can suggest strategies to improve the brand image, so the personality of tourist destinations should be congruent with the personality of tourists.