The role of psychographic personality traits in shaping marketing strategies for Indonesia's tourism sector

This study investigates international tourists’ personality-based psychographic traits and their destination preferences in Indonesia. Given the increasing importance of understanding diverse tourist behaviours to support sustainable destination development, particularly in emerging markets, this research addresses a critical gap in the application of psychographic segmentation in a developing-country context. Guided by Plog's psychographic model, it explores how allocentric, midcentric and psychocentric personality types influence destination choice, focusing on Indonesia's emerging super-priority tourist destinations. An online survey of 304 international tourists, predominantly from Europe, was analysed using descriptive statistics, cross-tabulations and multinomial logistic regression controlling for demographic and travel behaviour variables. The findings show that allocentric tourists are the majority (69.74%) and prefer emerging destinations such as Likupang, Lake Toba and Labuan Bajo, which offer novel, culturally rich experiences. Midcentric tourists (25%) tend to prefer Bali, a mature destination, but remain open to new sites. Psychocentric tourists (5.26%) largely choose Bali. These findings highlight the significant influence of psychographic traits on destination preferences and underscore the moderating roles of destination maturity, infrastructure and branding in shaping tourist behaviour. The model explains about 28% of variance in destination choice, reflecting meaningful explanatory power given the complexity of travel decisions. The study advances theory by integrating destination attributes with psychographic segmentation and challenges the static view of psychographic types by acknowledging behavioural dynamism influenced by cultural and technological changes. It contributes valuable insights to tourism scholarship, validating Plog's model in a developing economy and informing sustainable tourism development and destination planning.