Personalidade de destino - a aproximação entre consumidores e os destinos turísticos

Abstract

Competitiveness in the tourism market signals the need to create unique identities, capable of differentiating tourist destinations among themselves and attracting consumers. Despite this, most destinations around the world are "sold" in a very similar way; Highlighting generic features such as landscapes, friendly people and fun. Nowadays, this way of presenting or promoting destinations has become ineffective, since such characteristics do not constitute differentiators and a successful destination brand should be able to reduce substitutability. In addition, the literature pointed to the lack of adequate instruments to measure constructs and phenomena of this theme, which indicates the use of distorted or incorrect information by the market and compromising the analyzes performed. Thus, this thesis aimed to investigate aspects that are part of the core of the target brand (personality, positioning and market). The study of the personality of destination aimed to explore the theme and propose a national measurement that would allow to present the most authentic features of the Brazilian destinations to the consumer. The positioning and the market were analyzed considering the importance of the recognition of the profile of the consumer and their motivations of travel, translated in this thesis by means of a tourist motivation scale, able to provide information about the reasons of trip and the necessities associated with the tourism of recreation. For this, the methodology chosen included a preliminary phase of secondary data collection and qualitative analysis, followed by quantitative collection and analysis techniques such as exploratory and confirmatory factorial analysis. The initial stage of research aimed at constructing and validating destination personality scales and tourism motivation through the application of a survey with 899 self-declared tourism consumers. The destination personality scale was organized with 23 traits, grouped in six dimensions (experiential, organization, fun, status, spirituality and hospitality) and the scale of tourist motivation presented 18 reasons arranged in five dimensions (recreation, cultural, social, Prestige and escape). For the final stage of the research, a new survey was conducted with 769 tourism consumers and aimed to verify the relationship between the constructs studied (personality and tourism motivation of the consumer, destination personality and intention to travel). These relationships were tested through the analysis of structural equations and the construction of a model. In addition to the construction of the scales, the findings related to the relationships found, unprecedented in national surveys, stand out as results. It was found that the personality of the consumer influences both the motivation to visit certain tourist destinations and the selection of a destination considering their personality. Tourist motivation influences the choice of a certain type of destination personality and also the intention of visiting a tourist destination. Finally, it was found that the destination personality influences the intention of the consumer to visit a tourist destination. These findings represent a contribution based on the knowledge presented and the proposal, which includes the construction and validation of destination personality scales and tourism motivation, as well as a conceptual model on the theme.