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Academic inquiries have predominantly treated destination branding as a marketing phenomenon that happens to involve tourists as customers in a marketplace. The practice of it has been entrenched in deploying tactical marketing tools such as attention-grabbing slogans. This opening chapter provides a critical review of destination and place branding literature, as well as a synopsis of each of the 15 chapters assembled in this state-of-the-art collection. Considering tourism branding as a community affair, this volume is distinguished from previous publications by adopting a global and more multidisciplinary approach and by placing the subject of tourism branding outside of the conventional domains of marketing and destination. By having the host community at the central stage, many chapters explicitly consider different stakeholders in the process of branding. Built on theoretical foundations with both empirical findings and practical cases, this book brings together different perspectives and offers an intellectual and open dialogue among academics and practitioners of the field.

This chapter adopts a sociological perspective to examine the phenomenon of destination branding. Invoking the social exchange theory as the foundation and its complex exchange system as its framework, the chapter elaborates the uniqueness of rural destination as a social structure rather than a market or organizational entity. A branding model for rural destinations is proposed and illustrated through a case study. The model advocates a community-based approach to image research as a platform on which the branding process takes place. The chapter reports the comparative findings on the image as projected by a destination marketing organization, perceived by current and potential tourists, and desired by local residents. By highlighting the role of host community's participation in tourism branding, the study informs its definition as a continuing process to create affective experiences through building a unique identity and sustaining a consistent image that emotionally bond with residents and resonate with tourists.

This chapter integrates brand identity and equity as a two-dimensional approach to destination branding. By incorporating the supply- and demand-side perspectives, the approach enables different destination stakeholders to be included in this process. Drawing on general branding and marketing literature, the study presents a three-part framework for building and implementing a destination brand. It illustrates consumer-based equity as consisting of the four dimensions: awareness, image, perceived quality, and loyalty. The chapter also offers a critical synthesis of destination image studies and recognizes the important research advancement from image to branding.

As more destinations jump on the bandwagon of branding, their marketing organizations increasingly employ the Internet as a convenient medium for promotion. This chapter argues that instead of extending their brand communications to the Web by simply digitizing the logos, taglines, and other elements, destinations can build brands virtually in an internet-mediated environment where virtual experience takes place. The study examines how branding can be achieved through building virtualized destination image. It adopts the concepts of telepresence, virtual experience, and integrated informational response and explains how online and offline communication stimuli can affect various components of virtualized image. This expands and modifies the conventional image constructs by specifying information sources as antecedents through telepresence and integrated behavioral responses as consequences. The relationships between the image, its antecedents, and consequences, and among the image constructs are illustrated through 14 propositions. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the net community in which residents and other stakeholders of communities actively participate in virtually building a strong destination brand.

Collaboration has become a key paradigm in community-based tourism literature. Yet, it has not been well understood in destination branding. This chapter delineates a conceptual model to better describe and explain the nature and dynamism of collaborative branding for destinations. The model is based on a review of theoretical constructs of interorganizational collaboration process and the reconciliation of two product branding models. It suggests that the model begins in a context of environmental forces and evolves sequentially through the phrases of problem-setting, direction-setting, implementation, evaluation, and outcome.