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The purpose of this paper is to trace the emergence of a dominant paradigm from within which academics and practitioners alike currently describe and otherwise explain urban destination marketing. The paradigm has been dubbed the “theory of marketing competitive advantage (CA)” by the author, and by others as the “4P’s marketing paradigm”. To effectively market themselves as tourism destinations, this paradigm requires towns and cities to differentiate themselves through the provision of more or less unique products, based on which they subsequently undertake branding, market positioning, distribution and other activities through bespoke destination marketing organisations (DMOs).

The paper summarises the findings of: first, a review of the academic and practitioner literature on urban destination marketing; second, an online investigation of urban destination marketing in 62 European towns and cities, consulting the corporate and consumer pages of the relevant DMO website; and third, in-depth interviews with 20 senior DMO departmental executives. Each interview was recorded digitally for subsequent transcribing, and was conducted on the basis of a semi-structured interview schedule.

Theory, as enshrined in the “4P’s marketing paradigm” rarely holds up in practice. Irrespective of whether or not a town or city possesses CA (and few do), DMO marketing gravitates almost inexorably towards a “marketing of everything”. Moreover, much the greater part of urban destination marketing is ineffective, failing to create visitors and deliver the commercial and economic returns on which it is premised. Against a backdrop of DMO marginality and ineffectiveness and a reluctance by them to market what is special and different about places, the continued existence of DMOs and the destination marketing they undertake is thrown into serious question.

Interpretation is unavoidably subjective in parts, drawing on personal experience as well as research undertaken.

This paper is intended to give the reader an understanding of why success is so problematic in urban destination marketing, serving as an antidote to the prevailing idealised, normative and unproblematic picture of the DMO world as this is depicted from within the prevailing “4P’s marketing paradigm”. The research method provides a basis on which to unite theory and practice in the field of urban destination marketing in a more systematic and verifiable manner than has hitherto ever been the case.

The purpose of this paper is to examine urban destination marketing from a mainly practitioner standpoint, though one of its principal observations is the gap between theory and practice; while the former is premised on related notions of difference and competitive advantage, in practice the greater part of urban destination marketing eschews competitive advantage, resulting in a pervasive marketing of “sameness”.

The paper is in three parts. The first set out the urban tourism context in respect of historical, market, supply, impact and definitional/measurement dimensions. Part two profiles the bespoke delivery mechanisms established for urban destination marketing, examining nomenclature, core purpose/mission, status, size and finances, as well as overhead and operating parameters.

The final section comprises a state-of-the-art review, setting out a five variable model of purposeful urban destination marketing, concluding that “good” in urban destination marketing is atypical and currently in Europe is confined to only a handful of European cities.

This paper is intended to give the reader a better understanding of why, in such an important field of human endeavour, success is so problematic. It hopefully gives pointers to practitioners and academics as to how best in future there can be more winners and fewer losers, so that increasing numbers of towns and cities maximise the impact locally of the world's largest industry and at the same time become “known”.

The success of tourism destinations is in many cases measured from a competitive advantage perspective, not from a collaborative advantage perspective, which limits the possibilities of destination marketing in a collaborative cross-border context. Currently, the marketing efforts of Victoria Falls are highly fragmented as each country promotes the attraction separately. The purpose of this paper is to explore the cross-border destination marketing possibilities and realities of Victoria Falls from a demand and supply side perspective.

A quantitative approach was applied in this study, with two separate surveys being conducted. Data for the demand side were collected by means of a questionnaire that was distributed by fieldworkers, while data for the supply side were collected online. The data were analysed using descriptive statistics, factor analyses and one-way analysis of variance.

Five specific tourist motivations for visiting Victoria Falls were identified using demand data, of which sightseeing and destination attributes were the most important. Significant differences were found for tourists’ cross-border experiences using different border access points. Using supply data, challenges and opportunities of cross-border marketing were analysed. The most important opportunity was identified as cooperation, while the key challenges were economic and policy related. It is important to see the bigger picture and how cooperation can benefit both countries, which is unfortunately not currently the case for Zambia and Zimbabwe.

There is a need for tourism destinations to shift from competition-based strategies to collaboration-based strategies in order to be successful. Cross-border marketing requires that each country understands tourists’ motivations and experiences. For Zambia and Zimbabwe to increase their tourist arrivals, income and investment opportunities, both countries must move away from isolating their marketing efforts of Victoria Falls. It is important to look beyond the individual benefits for each country and focus on the combined benefits. The challenges identified in this study must be addressed if Zambia and Zimbabwe’s cross-border marketing of Victoria Falls is to be effective. The integration of demand and supply views is thus critical for cross-border marketing to be effective and successful.

Research on cross-border destination marketing of shared border attractions is limited. With regard to Victoria Falls, such research has never been explored in an academic context. This study has value for destination marketers of Zambia and Zimbabwe, especially for attractions that are shared between their borders such as Victoria Falls and Kariba Dam. Additionally, the study has implications for attractions that are shared across the borders of southern African countries like Zimbabwe, South Africa and Mozambique, as well as other attractions shared between borders in the global context.

This paper aims to address the issue of balance of power among stakeholders in the context of destination marketing and to offer direction for managing its diverse set of stakeholders.

A qualitative approach is used to provide a clearer insight into the phenomenon of stakeholder management in the context of destination marketing. This research uses a combination of three sources of evidence – interviews, documents and physical artefacts (in the sense of the actual web site) – and is based on the in‐depth study of the case of the development of the official web site of Tourism New Zealand (www.purenz.com).

This study shows that a wide variety of organizations and even the entire population of the country who are affected by destination marketing decisions should be recognized as destination stakeholders. Tourism New Zealand's leaders' understanding of cooperation and its value emerged as a major factor having an effect on the cooperation in the purenz development. The different objectives and perspectives of key stakeholders come through clearly in the case study which suggests that different approaches for managing the diverse stakeholders in the context of destination marketing are required.

A key finding that cooperation is not uniform has several implications for national tourism organizations (NTOs) around the globe. Study shows that the expectations of a cooperative process in destination marketing differ from group to group. This provides a useful guidance for Indian NTOs and NTOs in other countries who are responsible for tourism‐related policies in their country. The study makes the clear suggestion to Indian and global tourism practitioners and policy makers that management of various stakeholders in the context of destination marketing is not a given but a strategic choice which is affected by the existing network structure and climate.

This research is based on the data from one of the world's popular tourism destinations – New Zealand – and therefore, provides very valuable and practical guidance for national tourism organizations around the globe. Besides being of immense value to global as well as Indian practitioners, this study opens an avenue for students and academics to determine if there are differences in the understanding and expectations of cooperation among stakeholders of other tourism networks and to investigate the implications of different expectations of cooperation on the balance of power issues in inter‐organizational cooperation.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the potential contribution of some approaches, i.e. value‐chain, strategic marketing, electronic marketing and clustering, and to suggest a conceptual framework allowing improving effectiveness in the field of promoting tourism destinations. Hence, the paper puts forward a conceptual framework allowing attaining an integrated approach in tourism destination marketing.

The approach adopted and implemented for this study is a desk research based on extensive literature and well‐established theories.

The paper provides insights into a comprehensive approach to destination marketing planning and implementation and suggests a conceptual framework encompassing approaches contributing to improve effectiveness and efficiency in the field of destination marketing.

The factors influencing e‐marketing and clustering approaches are highlighted and a set of recommendations are put forward for destination marketers.

Destination marketing organisations all over the world have to implement innovative and appropriate approaches; and use adequate tools and techniques in order to improve their marketing activities effectiveness and efficiency. The paper successfully addresses the complexity in the field of destination marketing due to the various stakeholders involved and to the nature of tourism product/experience. Therefore, this paper successfully suggests a conceptual framework contributing to improve effectiveness and efficiency of activities of destination marketing organizations by adopting an integrated approach based on well‐established theories.

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic highlights the importance of destination marketing and media profiling to re-engage international tourists. However, potential crisis-induced nation brand (NB) deficits must be addressed to re-ignite tourism demand. The study examines the possible intervening effect of the contemporary NB in the international destination marketing and media-travel motives nexus.

A deductive quantitative study was undertaken with an online Amazon Mechanical Turk sample of n = 454 respondents. Hypotheses were tested using PROCESS Macro, Model 4.

The results show that the NB [people and negative events] had a practically significant partial mediating effect in the destination marketing – nature-cultural oriented travel motivation nexus.

New insights are provided via a practical model which facilitates the measurement of potential nuances in the influence of destination marketing and media profiling on leisure tourists' travel motives amid crises. The intervening effect implies that a better understanding of the NB as an indirect antecedent to travel motivation may result in more effective crisis communications and tourism recovery-oriented marketing.

The study is amongst the first to extend marketing and behavioural theory to explore the interplay between the marketing and media profile, a nation's brand and tourists' travel behaviour amid a crisis. The study addresses a discernible dearth of knowledge related to the influence of the NB on tourist behaviour from an emerging market perspective.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse how Twitter is utilized by five prominent American destination marketing projects (Illinois, San Francisco, Idaho, Texas, and Milwaukee) to understand the overall trends and usage patterns of microblogging, and the relation of social media ecology and place branding.

This is a comparative study of five Twitter accounts belonging to five destination marketing offices (@enjoyillinois, @onlyinsf, @visitidaho, @texastourism, and @visitmilwaukee). This research looks at two different types of communication activities on Twitter: one-way communication (i.e. broadcasting messages), and two-way communication (i.e. conversing with other users). A total of 5,582 tweets created between October 10, 2011 and October 10, 2012 were analyzed in terms of main topics and subjects covered, and main communication activities engaged.

The research found that destination marketing projects tend to use Twitter pre-dominantly to share about events – such as festivals, concerts, and fairs – taking place in their jurisdiction with their followers. These projects do not necessarily make use of interpersonal communication and networking capabilities of Twitter. Rather, this social media platform is used to distribute information online.

The findings of this research have practical and theoretical implications. On the practical side, this research sheds light on how Twitter is utilized, and creates recommendations on how destination marketing projects can widen the broadcasting of messages and reach target audiences. On the theoretical side, this research tests the explanatory powers of Kavaratzis' influential city branding framework.

The purpose of this paper is to extend the understanding about the augmented destination marketing process that has resulted from the introduction of electronic marketing methods. It attempts to identify the factors that contribute to the process of destination marketing by introducing an integrated marketing model. This study aims to expand the domain of knowledge about the tourist buying behavior by putting forward a framework to manage the destination marketing process for Cyprus.

The research design adopted for this study is an exploratory one, deploying the open‐ended approach of grounded theory. A number of expert interviews are performed with senior marketing executives at the Cyprus Tourism Organization (CTO), while an extensive study of the existing procedures that are being followed in carrying out the CTO's marketing department's functions facilitated further information analysis. The actual users' expectations are derived from a web‐user behavior analysis, reflecting upon relevant marketing theories and information systems approaches.

The paper provides insights into the augmented process of destination marketing planning and suggests specific ways through which National Tourism Organizations can manage it efficiently. The contribution of this study towards building on the body of knowledge is significant as the process of destination marketing planning is characterized by complexity due to the diverse interests of the stakeholders involved.

This paper successfully introduces the concept of integrated marketing as the sole enabler for the CTO to maximize the effectiveness of its marketing efforts worldwide.

The experience economy is characterized by the consumers’ search for emotions and memorable experiences through consumption. While the experience economy has a fundamental effect on tourists’ decision-making and their consumer behavior, only a limited number of past studies have examined the relations between the experience economy and destination marketing campaigns. To extend the scope of the existing knowledge, this paper aims to explore the use of experience marketing in destination marketing campaigns.

The study conducts a qualitative case study analysis of six national tourism marketing campaigns, i.e. it examines the use of experience marketing in tourism campaigns and the use of the strategic experiential module as an analysis framework for destination marketing campaigns.

The findings reveal an influence of experience marketing on the examined marketing campaigns as destinations highlight the motifs of memorable experiences, engaging people’s senses and creating meaning. In accordance with the strategic experiential module, the campaigns analyzed shift the marketing focal point from the characteristics of the destination to the tourists’ experiences of sensing, feeling, thinking, acting and relating.

The conclusions of the study contribute both to scholars and practitioners, extending the present knowledge of the link between experience marketing and tourism marketing, illustrating the effect of experience marketing on destination marketing and shedding new light on the role of the experience economy and experience marketing in tourism marketing campaigns.

The immense returns generated from tourist destinations have caused governments to invest to a greater extent in developing the tourism industry, with the aim of improving its market share. Scholars and policy makers for tourism destinations are not simply focusing on attracting more tourists but also on improving the competitive position of their destinations. For this reason, destination marketing has become a fountain for future growth and sustainability of tourism destinations in an increasingly globalized and competitive tourist market. The need to maintain a steady growth in tourism gains has increased pressure on marketers and promoters of Zimbabwe as a destination as they strive to attract and convince current and prospective tourists to partake in their tourism offerings. However, the efforts of various destination marketers in Zimbabwe have been undercut by the hyperinflation and unemployment of the country, which have destroyed both the supply and demand of tourism in Zimbabwe, as it became increasingly expensive, and where social unrest has grown. From a political perspective, the country witnessed fights and other forms of mayhem, which labeled the tourism destination unsafe for tourists' visits.