Prestige, Social Return and Intent to Travel: Making Sense of How Consumers Use the Prestige Conveyed by Travel to Signal Status

While tourism has always had elements of conspicuous consumption, social media provides a modern channel for leveraging the prestige of tourism into status. This paper brings these concepts together using the liberal theory of prestige and self-congruity theory to examine how personal prestige and its dimensions of distinctiveness, hedonism, social inclusion, and prosperity influence anticipated social return (a proxy for status). Results show the prestige dimensions of hedonism, distinctiveness, and prosperity influence social return, and social return influences intent to travel, suggesting marketers should tailor campaigns toward these types of prestigious qualities that will be positively evaluated on social media.