Lecture 10 Destination Branding

DESTINATION BRANDING
Introduction
 Destination branding is amongst the most
complex branding process, as the stakeholders
include both the public and private organizations,
local residents and the citizens staying abroad.
 According to the American Marketing Association,
a Brand is a “ name, term, sign, symbol, design, or
a combination of them, intended to identify the
goods and services of one seller or a group of
sellers and to differentiate them from those of
competition”.
The Importance of Brands
 The first branding papers appeared in the literature

during the 1950s.
 Gardner and Levy espoused the importance of
considering a brand as representing a personality (p. 35):
a brand name is more than the label employed to
differentiate among the manufacturers of a product.
 It is a complex symbol that represents a variety of ideas
and attributes. It tells the consumers many things, not
only by the way it sounds (and its literal meaning if it has
one) but, more important, via the body of associations it
has built up and acquired as a public object over a period
of time.
Brand Equity
 One of the most important impacts of branding

for commercial organizations has been the
increasing awareness of the balance sheet value
of brands, referred to as brand equity.
 That is, a brand can be an asset or a liability to
the firm, and as such can affect the valuation of
the firm.
 An effective brand strategy can provide a means
for successful differentiation.
Branding Destinations
 What exactly is a destination brand?

 Are they ‘collective hallucinations’?
 A brand is a distinguishing name and/or symbol (such as a
logo, trademark, or package design) intended to identify the
goods or services of either one seller or a group of sellers, and
to differentiate those goods from those of competitors.
 A brand must stand for something, a promise to the
consumer.
 It is useful to consider a brand as representing an identity for
the producer and an image for the consumer.
 It is proposed brand positioning that is the interface between
brand identity and brand image, over which the DMO has
some control.
Continued….
Brand identity
Mission/Vision
Brand
Values Brand image
Desired brand
Positioning
image
Difficulties in Destination Branding
1. Destinations are far more multidimensional than consumer

goods and other types of services. To be effective, positioning
theory suggests reaching the minds of busy consumers requires
a succinct message focusing on one or a few brand associations.
2. The market interests of the diverse group of active
stakeholders are heterogeneous. Counter to a market
orientation, where products are designed to suit market needs,
DMOs are forced into targeting a multiplicity of geographic
markets to attract a wide range of segments for their range of
products, most of which are rigid in what they can be used for.
Is one slogan, such as Beautiful China or Slovenia – the grown
place of Europe, likely to be meaningful to all market
segments?
Continued….
3. The politics of decision-making can render the best of theory
irrelevant. The issues of who decides the brand theme, and
how they are held accountable, are critical. At the level of
DMO governance and decision-making, politics arises
through inequality between tourism organisations.
4. There is a fine balance to be struck between community
consensus and brand theory, since a top-down approach to
destination brand implementation is likely to fail. Critically,
DMOs lack any direct control over the actual delivery of the
brand promise by the local tourism community. Without
buy-in from these stakeholders the strategy will likely flail.
Continued…..
5. Brand loyalty, one of the cornerstones of consumer-based brand
equity models, can be operationalised to some extent by
measuring repeat visitation through a DMO’s visitor monitor
programme. Staying in touch with previous visitors is a powerful
but untapped means of enhancing the destination brand, but
DMOs have no access to the hundreds of thousands of visitors’
contact details left at accommodation registration desks.
6. Funding is often a continuous problem for DMOs, in both scale
and consistency. Even the largest DMO budgets pale in
comparison to those of the major corporate brands, with which
they compete for discretionary consumer spend. Since DMOs
have no direct financial stake in visitor expenditure, they must
continually lobby for public and private funding. A successful
brand campaign leading to increased yields for local businesses
does not often translate into increased revenue for the DMO.
Conclusion
It has been suggested that the future of marketing will be

a battle of the brands, and that in tourism, destinations
are emerging as the world’s biggest brands. The concept
of branding consumer goods has attracted research
interest in the marketing literature since the 1950s. In the
time since, a rich resource of information has been
developed to guide product marketers. However, in the
tourism literature, the issue of branding destinations was
not reported until the late-1990s. While interest in the
field is increasing, there remains a dearth of published
information to guide destination marketers.
Thanks ………Any Quarry??????

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DESTINATION BRANDING

 The first branding papers appeared in the literature

 One of the most important impacts of branding

 What exactly is a destination brand?

1. Destinations are far more multidimensional than consumer

It has been suggested that the future of marketing will be

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