Branding tourism destination I. - Brand positioning of Hungarian destinations

Abstract

OBJECTIVE OF THE ARTICLE

Branding is in the focus in the fierce competition of the tourism market nowadays, by highlighting the strategic question: „What is our uniqueness?”. Answering this question holds difficulties for the service suppliers, and could create an intensified challenging situation for the destination managers responsible for an area with numerous, heterogenic actors. In Hungary the theory and the practice of destination management have become to the limelight of theory and practice only in the latest decade when the first so called destination management organizations have been established (TDO - Tourism Destination Organizations). These organizations have improved the destinations’ supply, and started the branding process as well: the rest of the analyzed destinations have a logo and a strategic message or the initiates of that, though the main question still be: how conscious is the concept behind the branding elements. The main objective of this article is to find the answer to this question with the objective of defining needs of developmet regarding brand positioning.

METHODOLOGY

The platform, serving the baseline for this analysis was the main communication channel of nowadays, assuring the most relevant platform in the tourism market as well, what is the online communication, particularly the webpages of the TDO’s. Regarding the methodology, structured content analysis was used based on pre-identified dimensions.

MAIN RESULTS

Considering the main results, the doubtfulness should be highlighted regarding the attitude of TDO’s toward the strategic issues of branding. The clear identification of the uniqueness was very rare among the analyzed actors, though they are more conscious at clarifying segmented touristic program offers based on their uniqueness.

PRACTICAL RECOMMENDATIONS

Front governmental point of view it can be recommended to lay more focus over supporting trainings, workshops helping TDO’s defining their uniqueness as a bottom-up process, starting from service suppliers’ package offers.