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A comparative analysis of brand strength and tourism intensity among the EU capital cities: Does branding really matter?

From the perspective of complexity and performance, destination branding can be considered as one of the most dynamic and challenging processes in marketing theory and practice. It has long been recognized that brand, as an intangible asset, is extremely valuable in differentiation of products, services and places from those of competitors. In this respect, brand strength is seen as an important indicator of the destination branding efficiency, which directly depends on visitors' perceptions, behaviors and loyalty, but also on the brand awareness of the supply side, free exchange of ideas, innovations and synergic interaction between stakeholders. In the context of this paper, a full implementation of the branding strategy is seen as a kind of turning point for tourism destinations that strive to build a strong brand in order to improve their market visibility, strengthen competitiveness and increase economic efficiency. This paper is focused on the capital cities of the European Union (EU) member states as the world's leading group of tourism receiving countries, which has accounted for 39% of all international tourist arrivals and 34% of international tourism receipts worldwide in 2012. Having in mind that EU capital cities are frequently the most developed urban areas and highly attractive tourism destinations for wide array of reasons, analysis of the linkage between brand strength and tourism intensity indices seems to be a valuable step forward in better understanding of urban tourism development dynamics and sustainability. While the growth of tourism intensity index indicates the increase in number of temporary visitors comparing to the size of local population, the growth of the brand strength indicates destination's strong branding activity towards more sophisticated market segmentation and attraction of target market segments. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to determine to what extent the implementation of branding process can have impact on building destination's brand strength and tourism economic performance in the EU capital cities. The relevance of this paper stems from the fact that tourism intensity in EU capital cities are among the highest in the world, which raises the concern about the sustainability of tourism development in these destinations. So far, the literature that interrelate tourism destination brand strength and tourism intensity indices in the context of capital cities is scant and much remains to be investigated and elucidated. From that point of view, the approach used in this paper can be considered as a pioneer in this particular field of research. The methodology used in this research was based on the literature study related to tourism destination branding, and comparative analysis of the main tourism development indicators among EU capital cities. For the latter, a simple relationship analysis between brand strength and tourism intensity was performed by using a cross-section analysis. The findings of this research reveal that tourism intensity index is directly related to destination brand strength index. Therefore, paper concludes that destination branding process is an important lever for creating and maintaining competitive advantages among capital cities on mature and saturated European tourism market.

destination branding ; tourism intensity ; capital cities ; European Union

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