Enduring travel involvement, destination brand equity, and travelers’ visit intentions: A structural model analysis

In the highly competitive tourist destination marketplace, destination marketers are constantly looking to enhance their brand equity by focusing on a number of key factors to strengthen their brand values. Because tourists' interests and involvement, adoption and visit intentions are fundamental elements to destination brand building, changes in these elements can serve as predictor variables for understanding the changes in destination demand. This paper examines the relationship among tourists' enduring travel involvement, destination brand equity, and visit intentions during pretrip information search. It was found that customer-based destination brand equity is a combination of key factors that can derive the overall utility that tourists place in the destination brand, some of which are impacted by enduring travel involvement. Furthermore, different facets of destination brand equity have positive impacts on destination visit intentions. This study provides new insights into the theory and practice of travelers' behavior and destination brand equity management. The findings are particularly valuable to destination marketers with direct or indirect responsibility to develop and protect the equity in their destination brands.

► Tourist's enduring travel involvement has a positive impact on destination brand equity.
► Enduring travel involvement would lead to travelers’ awareness of a destination.
► Knowledge of travel involvement can provide travel managers with a competitive advantage.
► Interest in travel has a direct impact on one's destination brand-equity understanding.