Destination Brand Governance: An Exploration of Destination Management Organisations’ and Operators’ Perspectives.

Abstract

This thesis explores Destination Management Organisations’ (DMOs) and operators’ role in destination branding. The thesis draws upon a resource-based view to explore how the combination of a destination’s key resources and capabilities (i.e. destination brand) create valuable destination experiences that are aligned to consumer needs and wants. In doing so, through a multi-stakeholder exploration of branding practices, this thesis builds on existing destination branding literature. As the broker of the destination’s resources, the DMO must balance the relationships with operators to establish a consistent destination experience through brand governance. Yet, destination brand governance is complex due to the heterogeneity of the organisations involved developing and delivering the brand. As such, balancing the relationships within the destination to establish brand buy-in is a challenge for DMOs. This thesis defines brand buy-in as the operators’ willingness to engage positively with the destination brand. The process requires the operators and DMOs to contribute resources together to achieve a consistent brand experience. Failure to do so weakens brand experience and negatively influences consumer loyalty. It is therefore vital that DMOs understand the dominant logic influencing operators’ destination branding goals to stimulate brand buy-in. The absence of empirical research exploring destination brands from an operator perspective and, in particular, ways to promote their buy-in prompt the need for this research. In doing so, ways for DMOs to balance operator relationships through governance mechanisms are revealed