Destination Personality: Gaining Insights for Destination Branding through the Lens of the Pandemic

The purpose of this paper is to discuss challenges for destination branding, based on a twofold perspective of a recent literature review: destination personality and pandemic. The pandemic has radically transformed tourism demand and supply, thus urging tourism marketers to adapt to newly formed tourist needs, wants and choice-patterns. On the other hand, destination personality (DP) applications can be effectively used in market segmentation, (re)positioning and targeting but also in other aspects of marketing strategies and components of the marketing mix. Destination (brand) personality, a critical concept mainly developed in the last fifteen years, forms the basis of an extensive literature review and content analysis. The methodology for the DP literature review is based on the PRISMA protocol; insights gained from the content analysis are presented in the light of the pandemic and its major effects on the tourism market. The results provide evidence for the need of DMOs to invest in tourist-destination identification and build strong destination personalities, in order to differentiate themselves from the competition. Moreover, the importance of on-site experiences and identification of new determinants of tourist satisfaction in the post-pandemic era prove critical for destination personality and branding. Cultural differences and evolving tourist profiles should be monitored regularly and form the basis of market knowledge, tourism product design and communicational strategies.