Brand Personality Traits of World Heritage Sites: Text Mining Approach

Abstract

UNESCO World Heritage Sites (WHSs) must necessarily display Outstanding Universal Values (OUVs), as these play a vital role in constructing competitive brand personality (BP) in tourism marketing. However, how these WHS qualities are perceived by visitors still needs substantial investigation. Adopting a visitor-driven approach, this study seeks to explore the intangible attributes of WHSs and, for the first time, uses the BP concept to measure these attributes in cultural attractions. To investigate how visitors perceive WHS personality traits, 5579 visitor-generated reviews of 175 French (39), German (44), Italian (50), and Spanish (42) cultural WHSs on TripAdvisor were analysed using empirical, mixed methods. Results show that four personality dimension categories can be attributed to WHSs: Sophistication, Sincerity, Competence, and Excitement. Moreover, a novel BP lexical technique is presented along with a 222-item personality trait dictionary, which can be used to measure personality traits in cultural attractions. Theoretical and practical implications of the study are also discussed