Destination Branding through the Perception of the Tourist: Case from Croatia

Creating a distinctive destination brand in order to maintain a uniform positioning of a place, region or country among the world travelers is a complex and challenging task. As the competition is becoming more intense, an increasing number of destinations or places struggle to make them visible in the global tourism market. Lack of understanding of the power of brand could be one the reasons for failure. In tourism, consumers often don’t buy individual products but images associated with products. Therefore, understanding how a tourist destination can identify its unique selling propositions and positioning for marketing itself to global customers (tourists), is the key question. The ultimate aim of this paper is to demonstrate an innovative approach to destination branding by exploiting the consumer power and their curiosity. The study is based on a marketing project conducted in Riviera Gradac, an attractive region situated on the southern coastline of Dalmatia in Croatia. It is a typical Mediterranean seaside destination that has traditionally attracted sun-sand-sea holidaymakers during the summer period. Faced with seasonality problems and increased economic stagnation, the local government decided to take measures to overcome these challenges and further leverage its destination brand. To reposition this appealing Riviera as a year-round tourist destination it requires much more to offer than warm climate and clean beaches. This time the projected brand has been constructed around a perception built on the key destination strengths including nature, culture, history and food. The theme of the new approach was to invite people to visit Riviera Gradac and enjoy the diverse range of experiences available there. The campaign appears to be a new, original, way of the destination branding.