Destination Branding: An Analysis of the Swedish Destination Image Representation and the Perception on the German Market

Master's Thesis from the year 2013 in the subject Tourism - Miscellaneous, grade: 1,0, University of Applied Sciences Heide, language: English, abstract: Destinations are one of the tourism industries biggest brands. Nowadays, travelers

are overwhelmed with places, which fit in their holiday scheme. The tourism

market is crowded by destinations and the outcome is the substitutability of

places. (Pike, 2005) Destination branding is a way to differentiate a destination

from its existing competitors. Branding a country is a complex and multilevel

business. One of the core aspects in destination branding is to identify and differentiate

a destination through to a positive destination image. The destination

image is a crucial part in the travelers' decision making process and verifiable

influence the tourist behavior. Therefore the destination image has become one

of the major concepts in destination marketing. Special focus is given to the

destination image theory, which is a major aspect in destination branding.

(Echtner & Ritchie, 2003; Qu et al., 2011; Wang & Pizam, 2011)

Just as product brands, destination brands are living entities. They have to be

managed continuously and changed over time, to ensure a fit to environmental

changes. (Wang & Pizam, 2011) Sweden has therefore developed a national

branding and sales strategy for the tourism industry to implement until 2020 and

fully launched in 2013. (Gaßmann, 2013) A part of this strategy is the creation

of special themes to present a holistic Sweden image and destination brand.

(Communication Guide, 2013) Among others, this strategy will be used to compare

the presented and advertised Sweden image with the image perception on

the German source market, to analyze compliance or incongruity. Germany is

an interesting and important source market for the Swedish tourism industry.

According to the research of the UNWTO, Germany is one of the biggest

spenders in the tourism industry in 2011 (UNWTO, 2012). Based to the results

from IBIS, the Swedish Border Survey about foreign visitors in Sweden, Germany

hold the fourth place, after Norway, Finland and Denmark considering the

amount of travelers to the country in 2011, with 1.796.016 visitors (IBIS, 2012).

Taking this into account, presenting a positive, fitting and attractive country image

has to be one of Sweden's main aims. [...]