Research in tourism management has focused a lot on understanding the ‘ideal’ or ‘perfect’ visiting experience, in order to support destination management organizations, hospitality industry and local businesses decision-making process. Yet, given the fact that both destinations and stakeholders have their own personality, this ‘ideal’ or ‘perfect’ visiting experience, is rather utopian as it may significantly vary among individuals. In fact, research about destinations and stakeholders supports the idea that the 'visiting experience' may fluctuate, depending on the personality of each. For this reason, this Research Topic seeks to delineate the role of personality of both destinations and stakeholders in achieving match, which in turn will make the visiting experience a win-win situation for stakeholders.

Visitors are no longer prepared to do exactly what they are told and experience a destination exactly as others want them to. Further, the evolution that has recently taken place in destination branding and the relevant novel tools that are available to both DMOs and visitors for promoting and exploring the destinations, respectively, have largely altered the relating matching of destination and stakeholders, as it was traditionally the case. Thus, listening to visitors (with dissimilar profiles and personalities) could improve their experience in destinations (with unique profiles and personalities) and vice-versa.

Beside contemporary theoretical constructs that shape visiting experience (e.g. pervasiveness of new media and technologies), alternative (well established) matching mechanisms (e.g. PE fit, push-pull, place attachment among others) have been implemented to enlighten the decision-making process of stakeholders (e.g. visitors, DMOs) in a tourism destination context. For example, they play a significant role in supporting visitors travel choices and tourism-related service providers effectively manage the tourism destination product. In addition, the related issue of dealing with destination alternatives has grown quite well recently with researchers focusing on destination choice overload effects. However this is only in its infancy, as there are many factors and matching parameters that could be included in relevant destination stakeholders’ decision-making processes.

This call seeks critical and innovative ways to delineate visiting experience, borrowing interdisciplinary explanatory mechanisms and insights from advances in both destination and stakeholder personality research. In other words, this Research Topics seeks to amalgamate knowledge from psychology, organizational behavior, marketing management, environmental studies, communication studies that can facilitate the delineation of the tourism experience.

Proposed study designs could incorporate conceptual and/or empirical research schemes using quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods approaches. Ideally, we shall integrate ideas and evidence coming from different disciplines, to exchange knowledge between disciplines and expertise, and to explore what multidisciplinary methodologies can offer to the Tourism Scholarship.

Personality Perspective recurring themes may include (but are not limited to):

• Branding profiles
• Visitors’ profile (as designated by their behavior)
• Employment patterns
• Customer orientation
• Employee personality
• Collaboration
• Dialogue
• Engagement
• Technological advances and their adoption by different stakeholders
• Personality traits and the footprint of a destination
• Technology-augmented visiting experience
• Servicescape effects on visiting experience

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Frontiers in Psychology

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