Destination Branding: The Case Of Spain

For many years Spain has been a touristic country attracting many people. In 2012, and compared to 2011, the number of visitors increased in one million getting to 57.7 million tourists, according to the Border Tourist Movement Survey (FRONTUR)2, even outnumbering the population in Spain. Particularly from the 1960s the Spanish government has focused on Tourism, because it has been an excellent source of income. Since 2008 the situation has not been so good due to the economic crisis, which is why in order to improve the reputation of Spain, a new agency called ‘Spain Brand’ (marca España) was set up in July 2012 so as to improve Spain’s image in front of the rest of the world. The purpose of Spain Brand is, the same as it happens with other destination brands, to attract customers from the rest of the world. In this article we are going to focus on analysing several ways of branding and different marketing techniques as well as some advertising campaigns used in Spain throughout the years. We examine howSpain has become the fourth ranked country in the world, out of 140 countries, and how it has been recently rebranded. Nowadays things are changing due to the current economic crisis we are going through in this globalized world and we will analyse different branding strategies that have worked for Spain and that could be applied in other emerging countries as far as tourism is concerned.