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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.

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.