LAUSR

Landmarks play an important role in representing tourist destinations because they symbolize a destination’s image and personality. Despite the significance of landmarks to the perception of a destination’s image and personality, a personality scale based on landmarks has not been developed. To this end, the purpose of this study is to propose a conceptual foundation of a landscape personality scale based on a destination personality scale using online travel reviews, which are regarded as more valid sources for understanding actual tourist perceptions than simple answers to survey questionnaires. The results of this study imply that the words that describe specific landmarks may differ from those that portray the entire destination and suggest that the words tourists actually use in real situations to characterize tourism resources can be distinguished from hypothetical words of a destination personality scale. Finally, the theoretical and practical implications of the research and directions for future studies are discussed.