The object of my desire! Exploring the antecedents of long-haul travel intentions in an era of uncertainty

In an increasingly uncertain global tourism environment characterised by health, safety and security, energy, economic and climate change-related pressures, there is an impetus for research into and analyses of adjustments in future travel behaviour. Taking South Africa as a long-haul destination, the study explores the conditional mediation of the relationship between country image (CI) and the long-haul travel intentions of international tourists by the interaction of intrinsic travel motives and distance desire. Data were generated from a deductive study from an online panel sample of 2021 German citizens. Two models based on country image dimensions emerged from the first data analysis stage. Both models were subjected to conditional mediation testing using PROCESS Macro's Model 58. The conditional mediation results confirmed the catalytic effect of distance desire, as it positively moderated the effect of aesthetic country image and travel motives in the mediated relationship between aesthetic CI and travel intention. The results also confirm partial conditional effects of distance desire in the normative-functional CI-travel intention nexus. The study offers tourism practitioners and destination marketing organisations novel insights into the emerging role of destination desire as an underlying mechanism in evaluative and interpretative frameworks for long-haul tourist behaviour during crisis-induced uncertainty.