PROFESSIONAL/ Destination Marketing Update

City branding and identity of place have assumed centre-stage in policy debates around both economic development and urban leadership in recent years, as urban areas are forced to increasingly compete against each other for investment, talent and visitors. A report by EUROCITIES examined the best practice among Europe’s leading metropolises as a means to provide a toolkit for others to apply this learning to formulate their own brand identity and positioning strategy. The report takes...

Working on the German market gives quite an impressive view on how the whole world is competing to attract the German tourist to their own destinations. Even in 2010, Germany, the so called “world travel champion”, confirmed its position as the top spender in leisure and business trips. Every possible strategy is developed and millions are spent in advertising campaigns. Nevertheless, to a certain extent, Germany remains largely traditional in its approach to advertising. For inst...

As the popularity of social media increases among users, so does the popularity of social media marketing among destinations. The key words for tourists and marketers in this constantly-changing online game are CREATE, SHARE and INTERACT. In recent years, a growing share of destination marketing efforts was directed to social media tools such as blogs, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. Social media marketing seeks to engage customers with the destination, in an active state in which users become...

“There is no point in average.” Wise words said by a colleague recently that have struck a chord. Some of the buzzwords that have been prevalent in our industry in the past year have included Value Sustainability Creativity / Budget ROI, ROE, ROR (I for investment, E for engagement, R for relationships) What we have are clients who still need to create events with impact, but who also must prove the value of the events to their internal clients. On incentive programs, we h...