Understanding Potential and Repeat Visitors’ Travel Intentions: The Roles of Travel Motivations, Destination Image, and Visitor Image Congruity

Understanding relations between travel motivations and intentions is important, yet these relations may be complicated by the existence of destination-related factors, such as perceived image. The current study attempts to understand motivation–intention relations from an image formation perspective, in the context of Australian potential and repeat visitors to Indonesia. Structural equation modeling (SEM) results show that, for potential visitors, travel motivations influence travel intentions only indirectly through destination image and visitor image congruity, while for repeat visitors, travel motivations influence revisit intentions both directly and indirectly. Comparisons of motivation–image–intention relations between potential and repeat visitors show that the direct influence of interaction-seeking motivation, destination image, and visitor image congruity on intentions were stronger for repeat than potential visitors, whereas, the influence of novelty- and assurance-seeking motivations on destination image were stronger for potential than repeat visitors. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.