Third International Conference on Tourism & Leisure Studies

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine the influence of tourist personality on travel behavior in order to define communication strategies for each personality trait. The theory used to describe personality is the “Big 5” with its five broad personality dimensions–extraversion, agreeableness, openness, conscientiousness, and neuroticism, and the personality trait referred to as sensation seeking. The travel behavior was explained with the variables travel arrangements, traveling companions, type of accommodation, type of board, tourist expenditure, number of leisure trips, selection of tourist destination, repetition of leisure trip destination and leisure trip length. The research has been carried out using a sample of 450 tourists on Gran Canaria, one sun and beach destination of Spain. According to the results, personality traits influence on travel behavior, and this may explain the necessity of using personality as segmentation criteria besides socio-demographic characteristics traditionally used in touristic studies. This global comprehension of our tourists´personality traits and their influence on their tourist behavior could be of interest for destination managers and touristic suppliers who provide tourist leisure activities.