Destination Branding

Master's Thesis from the year 2013 in the subject Tourism - Miscellaneous grade: 10 University of Applied Sciences Heide language: English abstract: Destinations are one of the tourism industries biggest brands. Nowadays travelersare overwhelmed with places which fit in their holiday scheme. The tourismmarket is crowded by destinations and the outcome is the substitutability ofplaces. (Pike 2005) Destination branding is a way to differentiate a destinationfrom its existing competitors. Branding a country is a complex and multilevelbusiness. One of the core aspects in destination branding is to identify and differentiatea destination through to a positive destination image. The destinationimage is a crucial part in the travelers' decision making process and verifiableinfluence the tourist behavior. Therefore the destination image has become oneof the major concepts in destination marketing. Special focus is given to thedestination image theory which is a major aspect in destination branding.(Echtner & Ritchie 2003; Qu et al. 2011; Wang & Pizam 2011)Just as product brands destination brands are living entities. They have to bemanaged continuously and changed over time to ensure a fit to environmentalchanges. (Wang & Pizam 2011) Sweden has therefore developed a nationalbranding and sales strategy for the tourism industry to implement until 2020 andfully launched in 2013. (Gaßmann 2013) A part of this strategy is the creationof special themes to present a holistic Sweden image and destination brand.(Communication Guide 2013) Among others this strategy will be used to comparethe presented and advertised Sweden image with the image perception onthe German source market to analyze compliance or incongruity. Germany isan interesting and important source market for the Swedish tourism industry.According to the research of the UNWTO Germany is one of the biggestspenders in the tourism industry in 2011 (UNWTO 2012). Based to the resu