Self-congruity and novelty seeking: The impacts on memorable tourist experiences

Self-congruity and novelty are significant motivators within tourism, however, the two constructs are paradoxical in nature. Novelty seeking is the rudimentary concept of individuals, through their cognitive and core incentive, wanting to seek a novel experience or information. Self-congruence is the alignment of the image of a given destination, and how well that correlates with a tourists' own self-image. Novelty seeking can offer a sense congruence with certain tourists', there are those that thrive on the unknown and those who avoid it. This research presents a paradox as, tourists seek the comfort of congruent attributes at a destination, while simultaneously, seek 'dissonance' through novelty-seeking behaviours. A quantitative method approach will be utilised, targeting individual's whom have travelled internationally within the past two years. The study will have a minimum target sample of 1800 respondents.