Adapts Aaker's (1997) brand personality framework for tourism destinations, identifying three destination-specific personality dimensions. Sincerity captures warmth, genuineness, and down-to-earth character of the destination. Excitement captures energy, vibrancy, and distinctiveness — the daring and spirited qualities that make a place feel alive. Conviviality captures social warmth, friendliness, and charm of the place and its people — a dimension not present in Aaker's original brand personality scale. Destination personality predicts tourist self-congruence (preference for destinations that match self-concept) and destination loyalty, and is used by DMOs for brand positioning and competitive differentiation.
Likert (1–5, not at all descriptive to extremely descriptive)
Sincerity — genuine, wholesome, cheerful destination character (Likert 1–7, not at all descriptive to extremely descriptive)
Excitement — daring, spirited, imaginative, up-to-date
Conviviality — family-oriented, provincial, friendly
Full scale items shown. Always cite the original source when using this scale in research.
Three subscale scores. Excitement is the most discriminating dimension for competitive differentiation among urban and adventure destinations. Sincerity is most salient in rural, heritage, and authenticity-oriented positioning. Conviviality is the strongest predictor of destination loyalty in hospitality-dependent destinations and is a key dimension distinguishing tourism destinations from product brands. Used alongside cognitive destination image scales to capture character-based brand associations.
Ekinci, Y., & Hosany, S. (2006). Destination personality: An application of brand personality to tourism destinations. Journal of Travel Research, 45(2), 127–139.
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