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, travelersare overwhelmed with places, which fit in their holiday scheme. The tourismmarket is crowded by destinations and the outcome is the substitutability ofplaces. (Pike, 2005) Destination branding is a way to differentiate a destinationfrom its existing competitors. Branding a country is a complex and multilevelbusiness. One of the core aspects in destination branding is to identify and differentiatea destination through to a positive destination image. The destinationimage is a crucial part in the travelers' decision making process and verifiableinfluence the tourist behavior. Therefore the destination image has become oneof the major concepts in destination marketing. Special focus is given to thedestination 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 bemanaged continuously and changed over time, to ensure a fit to environmentalchanges. (Wang & Pizam, 2011) Sweden has therefore developed a nationalbranding and sales strategy for the tourism industry to implement until 2020 andfully launched in 2013. (Gaßmann, 2013) A part of this strategy is the creationof special themes to present a holistic Sweden image and destination brand.(Communication Guide, 2013) Among others, this strategy will be used to comparethe presented and advertised Sweden image with the image perception onthe German source market, to analyze compliance or incongruity. Germany isan interesting and important source market for the Swedish tourism industry.According to the research of the UNWTO, Germany is one of the biggestspenders in the tourism industry in 2011 (UNWTO, 2012). Based to the resultsfrom IBIS, the Swedish Border Survey about foreign visitors in Sweden, Germanyhold the fourth place, after Norway, Finland and Denmark considering theamount 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 imagehas to be one of Sweden's main aims. [...]