Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
30
Key issues in destination
brand management
Nigel Morgan and Annette Pritchard
Introduction
Today there is more imperative than ever for places to manage their reputations as they compete
globally in attracting visitors, residents and businesses (Jaffe and Nebenzahl 2006; Yeoman
2008). Put simply, each time the name of a place is mentioned there is an opportunity to add or
subtract value to its equity or its brand. And a place with a positive reputation fi nds it easier
to vie for attention, resources, people, jobs and money; a positive place reputation builds place
competitiveness and cements a place as somewhere worth visiting (Florida 2002, 2010; Malecki
2004, 2007; Jansson and Power 2006). Today the world has 265 countries and approximately
3,400 large cities - all of which are seeking to improve, reverse, adapt or in some way manage
their international image. This means that more and more places looking to build or maintain
strong reputations are considering a holistic approach to their brand strategy which incorporates
tourism, economic development and a sense of place. A strong place brand is a powerful mediator
of culture, communities and peoples and being a powerful and resilient brand is hugely important
for any tourism destination in the fi ght to combat increasing product parity, substitutability and
competition. All of which opens up controversial questions of place authenticity, narratives
and authorship, performativity and story-telling as destinations are both geo-political systems -
often with their own Destination Management Organization or DMO (Buhalis 2000) - and
socio-culturally produced spaces, the result of constantly evolving discursive practices (Morgan
2004; Pike 2004; Saarinen 2004).
Place reputation management has a hugely signifi cant but complex relationship with tourism
destination development and marketing and the various connectivities between place brands,
place images, place reputations and competitive place identities lack critical exploration. What
do we even mean by 'destination'? Arguably, destinations are only marked as such through the
act of marketing and visiting. In other words, a place only becomes a destination through
the narratives, stories and messages attached to it through tourism. It is beyond the scope of
this chapter to tackle these questions around the wider aspects of place competitiveness,
destinations as symbolic and cultural constructions or to address the important topic of place
image. Instead it focuses expressly on how cities, regions and counties develop their competitive
identities or brands for tourism markets (see Kavaratzis and Ashworth 2010 and Morgan,
Pritchard and Pride 2011a for more detailed analyses). Specifi cally, this chapter describes the fi ve
