Abstract:

Today, tourism sector has become an important tool of economic development. That’s why, destinations develop tourism and marketing strategies to increase their market share in the competitive environment of the tourism market. One of the main ways to increase market share is creating destination brand loyalty to the destination. Many cities try to create brand loyalty with historical and cultural assets, natural beauties, geographical products in Turkey. Determining the relationships among antecedents of destination brand loyalty will improve the efficiency of tourism and marketing strategies.The purpose of this study is to explore the relationships between the destination brand loyalty and its antecedents with “structural equation modelling” and to demonstrate how the model can be used by urban administrators for developing competitive marketing strategies in tourism industry. Sample of the research is composed of foreign tourists, who came in Diyarbakir city center in May, June and July 2015, and stayed at three star, four star and five star hotels. Research findings show that all of the antecedents (functional congruity, actual self congruity, brand identification, lifestyle congruity) have positive impact on destination brand loyalty, besides lifestyle congruity antecedent is found to have the most important direct impact on destination brand loyalty

Keywords: