A Gate-and-Menu Theory of Collective Tourism Brand Value

A collective tourism brand is jointly produced by assets managed by different custodians, so destination managers must decide which assets require collective protection. We model a destination as a gate times a menu. The gate combines essential inputs and non-reproducible anchors as a weaker-link public good; the menu combines many reproducible attractions through love of variety. Deterioration of a binding gate element has a non-vanishing, brand-wide effect, whereas an individual menu attraction's share vanishes as the menu grows. Aumann-Shapley accounting allocates the jointly produced brand value across assets. Under stated surplus and non-use-value conditions, a decentralized custodian weakly under-maintains physical gate quality holding other qualities fixed. We measure the framework's constructs from guide text with two language models across 166 economies, subject the gate labels to a partial external check against the World Heritage List, and illustrate a within-brand contamination ordering with four French wine regions.