Description
The purpose of this paper is to analyze the relationship between tourists’ user-generated
content on the web and destination branding, as well as to discuss the online strategies used by
destination management organizations
International Journal of Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research
Tourist-created content: rethinking destination branding
Ana María Munar
Article information:
To cite this document:
Ana María Munar, (2011),"Tourist-created content: rethinking destination branding", International J ournal of Culture, Tourism and Hospitality
Research, Vol. 5 Iss 3 pp. 291 - 305
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Tourist-created content: rethinking
destination branding
Ana Mar? ´a Munar
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyze the relationship between tourists’ user-generated
content on the web and destination branding, as well as to discuss the online strategies used by
destination management organizations.
Design/methodology/approach – The research adopts an exploratory study of social media sites and
destination brands, relying on qualitative research methods, content analysis and ?eld research.
Findings – Tourists are largely contributing to destination image formation, while avoiding the use of the
formal elements of the brands. The most popular strategies used by destination management
organizations exhibit some crucial weaknesses. However, a strategy based on analytics brings new
opportunities for destination branding.
Originality/value – The study provides an innovative analysis of tourist-created content and its impact
on destination branding and presents a theoretical model of generic web-based strategies.
Keywords Destination branding, User-generated content, Information technology, Tourism
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Information and communication technologies (ICT) are of great importance in understanding
the development of today’s tourism destinations (Buhalis and Law, 2008). Their impact is
considerable in the branding of tourism products in general and in the branding of
destinations in particular. However, a review of the literature reveals minimal knowledge
related to the impact of one of the latest developments in ICT, the popular phenomenon
known as ‘‘Web 2.0,’’ on destination branding. This term describes a Web which is
‘‘increasingly in?uenced by intelligent Web services that empower users to contribute to
developing, rating, collaborating and distributing Internet content and customizing Internet
applications’’ (Vickery and Wunsch-Vincent, 2007, p. 9). These forms of virtual social
communication are based on Content Management Systemsoftware (Stillman and McGrath,
2008) and include a mixture of different tools such as blogs, wikis, podcasts, messaging
applications and others which are meant to encourage the sharing of information.
Web 2.0 tools are widely used by tourists to get information about tourism destinations and to
share their tourismexperiences. The digital content provided by these tourists has increasingly
in?uenced destination awareness and image creation (Tussyadiah and Fesenmaier, 2009). This
development is due to the following factors: more powerful and affordable hardware and
software, a faster network edge, advances in easy-to-use tools for creating and sharing
content, a higher e-literacy in the population of the world, and the increase of portable and
wireless platforms (Parameswaran and Whinston, 2007). These factors entail a change in the
locus of control of the creation process of the online branding of destinations. Nowadays, web
branding content, previously controlled by organizations and corporations, is to a larger extent
the expression of the interaction and participation of end-users.
DOI 10.1108/17506181111156989 VOL. 5 NO. 3 2011, pp. 291-305, Q Emerald Group Publishing Limited, ISSN 1750-6182
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INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CULTURE, TOURISM AND HOSPITALITY RESEARCH
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PAGE 291
Ana Mar? ´a Munar is an
Associate Professor at
Copenhagen Business
School, Frederiksberg,
Denmark.
Received: June 2009
Revised: June 2010
Accepted: June 2010
The author thanks the Nordic
Innovation Center for research
funding, and Carina Hallin and
Bjarke Møller for reading and
providing comments to this
manuscript.
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One of the main characteristics of the Web 2.0 turn is that it enables user generated content
(UGC). UGC refers to the information that is digitalized, uploaded by the users and made
available through the internet. This paper focuses on a speci?c type of user generated
content: tourist created content (TCC). The study departs from ?ndings presented in earlier
studies on TCC (Munar, 2010) and analyzes the impact of TCC on destination branding.
A large number of researchers focus on how the technological revolution of ICT has
transformed tourism (Buhalis and Law, 2008) and several studies analyze the interrelation
between destinations, consumer searches and ICT (Fodness and Murray, 1997; Bonn et al.,
1999; Weber and Roehl, 1999; Buhalis, 1998; Luo et al., 2004; Werthner and Ricci, 2004;
Fr? ´as et al., 2008; Li et al., 2009; Weinberg, 2009). Tourism research has many relevant
studies relating to destination branding (Gartner, 1986; Cai, 2002; Ooi, 2004; Konecnik and
Gartner, 2007; Murphy et al., 2007; Marzano and Scott, 2009), but a speci?c focus on UGC
and destination branding is missing. Nevertheless, several social scientists focus on the
Internet as a factor of social, cultural and economic change (Castells, 1996, 1997, 2001;
Poster, 2006; Basu et al., 2007; Schwanen and Kwan, 2008; Stillman and McGrath, 2008)
and on the importance of UGC (Lenhart and Fox, 2006; Cooke and Buckley, 2008; Lenhart
et al., 2008). Dellarocas (2003) analyzes the consequences of the digitalization of
word-of-mouth, a relevant factor concerning destination image formation, and several
popular books cover the issue of social media and business management (Qualman, 2009;
Weinberg, 2009).
Most of the knowledge and sources available on the topic of Web 2.0 and UGCin tourismare
organizational reports or newspaper and magazine articles, many of which contain
information provided by web sources and consultancy ?rms, weakening their level of
reliability and validity. Although tourism research has interesting contributions on the topic of
the internet and tourism branding, the impact of TCC and destination branding remains
unexplored.
Tourist created content and destination branding
UGC is the aggregation and leveraging of users’ contributions on the web. UGC is the digital
transformation of cultural objects: text, sounds and images (Poster, 2006). Several de?nitions
and classi?cations of this content exist in the literature (Cook, 2008; Cooke and Buckley, 2008;
Deshpande and Jadad, 2006; Lenhart and Fox, 2006; Stillman and McGrath, 2008; Vickery
and Wunsch-Vincent, 2007; Wellman, 2007; World Tourism Organization, 2008). Cook (2008)
de?nes UGC as a part of broader user contribution systems. These systems ‘‘aggregate and
leverage various types of user input in ways that are valuable to others’’ (p. 62) and consist of
various types of contributions: active contributions (aggregating content or items for sale) and
passive contributions (aggregating behavioral data or resources). Vickery and
Wunsch-Vincent’s (2007) analysis of the participative web provides a difference between
UGC and user created content (UCC) and focuses on the creative element of the content
generation. Tourist created content refers to the active and creative contributions of tourists on
the web (Munar, 2010). Many of the tools related to UGC(e.g. blogs, podcasts, wikis, etc.) are
used by tourismcorporations and organizations to increase and enhance interaction with their
employees/members and the connectivity with suppliers and other business partners.
However, an analysis of this business-to-business perspective would lie beyond the aims of
this study. The focus of this research is on the participative end-user, the tourist and the impact
of his/her contributions to destination branding.
The importance of the UGC is evident in the fact that a number of companies, which
intensively use Web 2.0 tools, are already among the top ten most visited sites by US internet
users: eBay (n.7), Amazon (n.8), Wikimedia Foundation (n. 9) (Nielsen, 2008). Youtube, eBay
and Wikipedia are also listed as numbers six, eight and 10 in the ranking of the top 10 brands
(Nielsen, 2008). Data from ?rms measuring Internet traf?c show high levels of concentration
on some of the most important UGC web sites: MySpace, having 64 percent of the market
share of the US and YouTube, accounting for 75 percent of all U.S. visits in May 2008 among
a customcategory of 63 online video web sites (Hitwise, 2008). Facebook announced a total
of 200 million members in March 2009 (Stone, 2009).
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The proportion of TCC on speci?c tourism sites examined in this study is also very large.
TripAdvisor received more than 25 million visits during the month of July 2008 (Weisman,
2008); Wayn is a community site with 13 million members (The Times, 2009); and
Virtualtourist has more than 1,100,000 members, over 1,700,000 reviews and 3,500,100
photos (Virtualtourist, 2009).
While UGC is a massive phenomenon, not everybody is an active virtual contributor. Castells
(2001) argues that countries’ unequal distributions of wealth, education and technological
infrastructure have led to great territorial diversity, which characterizes the use of the
Internet. Other critical perspectives on UGC address the lack of quality of content as well as
issues of identity theft (Aspan, 2008; Keen, 2007; Poster, 2006; Stillman and McGrath, 2008).
Destination branding
An intense competition among destinations characterizes tourism today (Kim and
Fesenmaier, 2008). Globalization processes (Munar, 2009), an increased interest in place
(Anholt, 2003), and destination branding are key factors that have contributed to an increase
in this competition (Cai, 2002; Konecnik and Gartner, 2007; Murphy et al., 2007; Pike, 2004).
Several authors discuss the differences between product or service branding and the
branding of a destination (Cai et al., 2009; Marzano and Scott, 2009; Ooi, 2004).
Destinations are more complex and diverse than speci?c tourism products (Ooi and
Stoeber, 2010). The creation of a destination brand has to address multiple groups of
stakeholders, socio-cultural identities and take into consideration the intangibility and
multifaceted features of a destination.
The image and the brand of a destination are two distinct concepts. However, the brand’s
existence is dependent on the image formation of the destination (Cai, 2002). The image
‘‘represents the sum of beliefs, attitudes, and impressions that a person or group has of an
object’’ (Nadeau et al., 2008, p. 84). The image of a destination is owned by tourists and
permeated by the socio-cultural and economic changes that impact on their sensitiveness.
The organic evolution of the image, which is brought about by word-of-mouth and all other
types of information received about the destination, is different fromthe induced evolution of
the image that results from destination management organizations’ (DMO) brand promotion
(Gartner, 1986).
Destinations compete through the images held in the minds of potential tourists (Baloglu and
McCleary, 1999). However, DMOs do not have control over the speci?c attributes of the
tourism experience. Therefore, their main effort is in brand awareness and image formation.
This lack of ownership of the destination product makes the taglines, slogans, logos and
commercial campaigns the focus of the destination brand and represents the formal
elements of the brand. Tourists relate to the destination brand by participating in image
formation and by adopting and using these formal elements in their different types of
generated content on the web.
Methodology
This paper is an exploratory study of tourist created content, a speci?c subtype of UGC, and
destination branding. The study relies on qualitative research methods, including textual
analysis through documentary studies of web content and ?eld research, based on the
project ‘‘Travel 2.0 promotion in Asia and Paci?c’’, conducted by the Scandinavian Tourism
Board Asia/Paci?c. The theoretical background of the study is founded in the literature of ICT
in tourism, in the more general literature of branding and destination management, and other
related social sciences on the evolution and impact of the internet. Other literature consulted
during the study includes documents and reports provided by organizations which study
ICT’s usage and development.
The research design had several phases. The ?rst phase, based on preliminary studies,
involved designing a classi?cation system. This task included: ?rst, the establishment of a
sample of destination brands and a theoretical sample of web sites based on rankings of
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social media sites (Comscore, 2009; Hitwise, 2008); second, the examination of content of
the sites according to the classi?cation of the UGC of sites as developed by Munar (2010);
and third, the selection and analysis of a larger sample of sites based on a larger literature
review. The sampling focused on sites that indicated the use and development of UGC as
primary purpose (not including sites of organizations which display Web 2.0 tools to a minor
degree) and to tourism related sites. The great majority of the analyzed sites are online
communities and social network sites. Sample of web sites and tourist-created content
(TCC) are:
B Blogabond.com
B Couchsur?ng.org
B Dopplr.com
B Gowander.com
B Hostelz.com
B IgoUgo.com
B iTourist.com
B Lonelyplanet.com (Thorn Tree)
B Travelblog.org
B Travelersfortravelers.com
B Travelistic.com
B Travelpod.com
B Tripadvisor.com
B Trip?lms.com
B Trustedplaces.com
B Virtualtourist.com
B Wayn.com
B Worldreviewer.com
B Digg.com
B Facebook.com
B Flickr.com
B Myspace.com
B Twitter.com
B Youtube.com
B IsAnyoneGoingTo.com
B Liftshare.com
The sampling considered many tourism and travel sites but many were also eliminated from
the sample, either because of their high commercial focus or because their prime content
was based on blogs provided by experts and not open to all tourists in general
(e.g. gridskipper.com, the coolhunter.com or spottedbylocals.com). These sites were
compared to the sample of 19 main destination brands: 18 national brands and one US state
brand.
The second phase included developing a model of strategic analysis. The model identi?ed
how DMOs try to bene?t from TCC and examined the relationship of TCC to destination
branding in each one of the stages of the tourism experience. The strategic analysis was
based on the work conducted during the project ‘‘Travel 2.0 promotion in Asia and Paci?c’’.
This project, which began in January 2009, includes the development of a Web 2.0 platform
for the Asian tourism market for the Scandinavian Tourism Board.
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The focus of the research is tourist created content and destination branding. The study
introduces some explanations related to other generated content in order to understand the
general phenomenon. The rapid change in the patterns of internet use, as well as the
fragmentation and massive amount of data associated with the object of analysis,
represents a challenge to the study of the web. However, the complexity of web analysis
does not make this study any less relevant. The aim here is not to map all the possibilities of
TCC, but to contribute to a wider understanding of how tourists’ contributions on the web
in?uences destination branding.
Brand, image formation and types of tourist created content
Tourists create three main categories of digitalized content: narrative, visual and audio.
Tourists use these different types of content to refer to the destination brand. The written
expression of the destination brand is the name of the destination combined with a word, a
tagline or slogan, as in the following cases:
B Denmark – ‘‘Feel Free’’;
B Greece – ‘‘The True Experience’’;
B Thailand – ‘‘Amazing Thailand’’;
B South Africa – ‘‘It’s Possible’’;
B Italy – ‘‘Much More’’; or
B Singapore – ‘‘Uniquely Singapore’’.
In some cases the name of the brand is the same as the name of the DMO (e.g. Visit
Sweden). Tourists can use the written expression of the brand employing different narrative
genres (Table I). These genres represent a continuum from a more descriptive and
objectivistic narrative (the encyclopedic) on the one hand, to a more subjective and personal
narrative (the diary) on the other. (For in-depth analyses of the genres, see Munar (2010).)
The ?uidity of genres, and of media, characterizes TCC. This ?uidity makes it very dif?cult to
monitor and control all the possible ways in which the different formal elements of the brand
may appear in TCC. Furthermore, the different contents use hypertext at different levels, with
links to other sites or documents available in the cyberworld. In addition, depending on the
system architecture of the site, the tourists’ narrative contributions remain open to other
users’ contributions. For example, some of the sites allow users to grade how useful the
information provided in the review is or to give general comments. The views of these
contributors and technological platforms on copyright or authorship are highly informal, with
frequent use of pseudonyms and nicknames. The features of openness and collaborative
content are embedded in the system. Therefore, it can be argued that TCC is about
communication and personal expression and the content encourages both the knowledge
sharing of tourism products and the sociability of the tourism experience.
Table I Brand, destination image and TCC
Tourist-created content
Destination branding formal
elements Destination image formation
Narrative (encyclopedic,
review, travel diary, blog,
microblog)
Narrative identity: Slogans,
taglines, brand name
Narrative text of the
impressions, beliefs and
attitudes on the destination
experience
Visual (photography and video) Visual identity: Logo, advertising
campaigns (photos or video)
Images of the destination
experience
Audio (narrative and/or
musical)
Audio advertising campaigns
(music or text)
Audio stories about the
destination experience
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Narrative genres and destination branding
This section provides an analysis of TCC and destination branding examining four different
genres: encyclopedic, review, diary and blog. The encyclopedic genre is based on
knowledge sharing with a form of peer-review or critical evaluation of the content. One
example is Wikitravel, ‘‘a project to create a free, complete, up to date and reliable
worldwide travel guide’’ (Wikitravel, 2008). The encyclopedic feature of TCC increases the
amount of tourism information available, with a focus on a traditional socio-geographical
perspective. Tourists’ encyclopedic content uses the destination name, either without the
use of tags or slogans associated with it, or without any visual characteristics of the brand,
such as logos. This genre provides an image of objectivity and neutrality and avoids any
commercial-like expressions, such as slogans. For example, in this type of content Spain is
expressed as ‘‘Spain’’ and not as ‘‘Smile you are in Spain’’, which is the slogan of the
country’s latest destination branding campaign; Copenhagen is expressed as
‘‘Copenhagen’’ and not as ‘‘Wonderful Copenhagen’’ or the most recent brand of
‘‘C-Open-hagen’’. The focus is on reliable and free-from-commercial-interests information on
the destination. This content is destination-, not product-oriented. The type of destination
presented in this content is not an emotive one, as attributes of a psychological or emotional
type associated to the brand image are seldom.
The review genre is based on the critical evaluation of a tourism product or experience. A
very popular site which relies mainly on this genre is TripAdvisor. This is a type of genre
which creates a lot of concern among tourism suppliers. The main focus of this type of
content is not the destination brand but brands of tourism products. This content has a
commercial bias. A large majority of the content examines and rates suppliers of hospitality,
attractions, travel and transport products and services. Although the focus of the review
genre is not on the destination as a whole but on speci?c tourism products, the composite
nature of the tourism experience also makes this type of TCC very pertinent to the overall
image formation of the destination brand.
In the architecture of the sites the focus is on the geographical name and not on the narrative
associated with the destination brand. Different destination brands were compared to the
sample sites, such as Trip Advisor, Virtual Tourist and IgoUgo. The results show that tourists
do not use the brand name, the taglines, or other similar formal elements in their review
content. At the same time, the ?ndings show thousands of results when using the
geographical name of the destination. This name acts as an umbrella for the different tourism
products. For example, when searching Copenhagen in TripAdvisor, the information
displayed is not related to the of?cial brand. The main title that appears is ‘‘visiting the city of
Copenhagen’’, combined with links to other reviews on accommodation, attractions, etc. In
the case of Spain the destination is announced as ‘‘visiting Spain’’, and the same pattern
applies to other destinations. Again, as in the previous case, the of?cial brand name, tagline
or slogans are all missing. In the case of IgoUgo the word Italy has more than 2,000 reviews
linked and France receives over 1,900 reviews. Both cases display zero results when
searching the national brand, ‘‘Rendez-vous en France’’ or ‘‘Italy – Much more’’. The brand
‘‘Uniquely Singapore’’ receives zero results, while the geographical name has more than 600
reviews linked. ‘‘Amazing Thailand’’ has one speci?c review(a tourist that commented on the
destination’s of?cial web site), while Thailand has more than 1,120.
The diary genre (or travel journal) relates to the narrative explanation of the personal
experience of the travel. This genre is also very popular on the web and is mostly expressed
in the form of travel blogs at the different sites. The formal elements of destination brands
with their taglines and slogans are mostly missing fromthis type of content. For example, the
new brand of Greece, ‘‘Greece, the true experience’’, does not generate any results in travel
diary sites such as Travelersfortravelers or Gowander. However, this type of content displays
a strong focus on destination image formation. The diary genre includes a large amount of
narrative content. This content communicates the experience of the destination, including
emotional and personal perceptions, beliefs and attitudes.
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The general blog genre displays a similar tendency. Blogs have a high use of the
geographical name and image formation and a minimum reference to the brand formal
elements. This type of content relates to individual opinions about speci?c issues (Ryu et al.,
2009). This genre is a mixed-genre which contains many elements related to the diary, but
can also contain encyclopedic knowledge and review passages. The examination of
blogging sites (e.g. Travelblog) shows many references to some of the formal narrative
brand elements, for example, ‘‘Amazing Thailand’’. However, these blogs are written by
organizations, not by tourists, and are therefore not TCC.
Visual and audio content and destination branding
The visual content has two main types:
1. photographic; and
2. audiovisual.
This UGC is a popular form of contribution in tourism sites. The visual expression also has
different genres and appears combined with hypertext and other forms of expression, such
as the use of titles, descriptions attached to images, tags on photos, etc. Some of the most
popular general sites for video and photo sharing are Flickr, Youtube or Travelistic. Many of
the images on these sites have a real life approach, without any or only a minimum amount of
manipulation. This form of content makes a very powerful contribution to destination image
formation. The main content and focus of these visual contributions is on the personal
experience and not on the formal visual elements of the brand. Some of these sites, like
Youtube, are not tourism speci?c and, therefore, the information provided about the
destinations does not necessarily have a tourism focus. Destination managers upload visual
content advertising the brand in many of these social network sites (e.g. Amazing Thailand in
Travelistic or 100% pure New Zealand in Youtube). However, these corporative contributions
do not qualify as TCC. The audio content is to be found in the form of podcasts. This type of
UGC is increasingly popular, thanks to the iPod and other mobile technologies. This content
shows different combinations of multiple media. Audio content is seldom in the sample of
web sites studied.
Examination of the web sites and different destination brands show that tourists do not use
the brands’ formal elements. At the same time, tourists are extremely active in destination
image formation. The destination brand’s taglines, slogans, logos, video or audio advertising
are not essential parts of TCC. An extensive analysis of social network sites shows that the
image formations provided by TCC are simply a large collage of digitalized personal
expressions that do not have any structured commercial goals. The tendency to focus on the
destination image and ignore the destination brand formal elements can be a conscious
decision made by the tourist in order to appear independent from commercial interests. This
could be a consequence of TCC being embedded in Internet cultures with a strong
anti-commercial background, such as the hacker culture or the open source movement
(Castells, 2001). Another possible explanation is the lack of reach of today’s destination
branding campaigns in relation to the TCC target group.
Digitalization of the tourism experience
TCC has expanded the ways by which tourists see and interpret the world. Traditionally,
tourism conceptualization resulted from a basic binary division of the ordinary/everyday and
the extraordinary (Jafari, 1987). However, modern sociological analysis challenges the
assumption of the separation between home and away (Franklin and Crang, 2001; Larsen
et al., 2007). According to Jansson (2002) tourism is intertwined with the consumption of
media images the tourism industry and the culture industry create. TCC is a new form of
mediation in the creation of the tourismexperience, which neither represents the industry nor
the cultural industry, but which airs people’s personal re?exive considerations of the tourism
experience. TCC functions as virtual mediator.
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Jafari’s (1987) tourism model identi?es several components representing the different
stages of the tourism experience:
1. Corporation.
2. Emancipation.
3. Animation.
4. Repatriation.
5. Incorporation.
TCC takes place during the different stages of the tourism experience and has different
types of impact on the destination brand. In the ‘‘corporation’’ component the tourist-to-be is
in a search position and this stage corresponds to the pre-purchase and decision-making
phases. Destination marketing campaigns largely focus on pre-purchase stages. Therefore,
of?cial channels of information about the destinations that make intensive use of the formal
elements of the brand compete with the social networks of tourist-to-tourist communication
and their focus on multilateral image formation.
The destination brand tries to induce the person to choose a speci?c destination among all
others (Gartner, 1986). The brand enhances recognition and awareness within the huge
amount of information available. To achieve this, traditional destination branding utilizes
marketing campaigns while depending heavily on the word-of-mouth and the organic image
of the destination. The introduction of the web expands these strategies to include active
web sites with a locus of control on DMOs and extensive web marketing tools.
The Web 2.0 and, speci?cally, TCC increase the channels of communication with the
consumer base in tourism generating regions. However, this new channel of communication
presents several challenges to DMOs. TCC implies the digitalization of the word-of-mouth
mechanisms that are so powerful in shaping tourism demand. The Web 2.0 expands the
word-of-mouth through a global distribution system of information. The locus of control of
communication is no longer on a business-to-customer basis but largely on a
customer-to-customer. The Nielsen Global Online Consumer Survey (Nielsen, 2009) of
over 25,000 online consumers from 50 countries found that opinions posted by consumers
online are among the most trusted forms of advertising globally.
In the search position stage the tourism consumer (tourist-to-be) is only in search mode, a
self-re?ecting watcher of destinations, and is not actively uploading images, texts or videos of
the destination. Rather, the tourist-to-be is looking for information and is enriching his/her image
of the destination. TCC during ‘‘corporation’’ includes blogs and other types of content (audio
and/or visual podcasts) that refer to the desire and motivation to travel and the possibilities or
impossibilities of doing so. TCC works as an important complement to the knowledge and
opinions the tourist-to-be has about a speci?c destination. Therefore, the TCC on destinations
provided by tourists who already have visited the destination may have the largest impact at
this stage, by affecting other users’ motivation for travel and purchase choices.
‘‘ Emancipation’’ is the second component of the model. This stage refers to the physical
journey to the tourist destination as well as the mental travelling – entering into ‘‘touristhood.’’
The TCCat this stage corresponds to the content produced and uploaded during the physical
travel to the destination. Destination branding has a weak interest on transportation sites.
Usually, destination brands, like the ones examined in this study, focus on the cultural, social
and natural features of the destination. Transportation sites are regarded as facilitators of the
travel experience but are still standardized international places without much local ?avor.
The ‘‘repatriation’’ is, due to its focus on transport and the movement in space, very similar to
the emancipation component. However, the psychological perspective of this stage is very
different. During repatriation tourists create and share content on the Web that indicates their
satisfaction or disappointment with the destination experience. The empirical experience of
the destination, with all its features and products, transforms tourists’ images of the
destination, as well as their brand perception, and a modi?ed image takes form in the
tourist’s mind. At this stage TCC can re?ect a more complete image of the destination.
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The ‘‘animation’’ component corresponds to the ‘‘tourist doing tourism in his animated
world’’ (Jafari, 1987, p. 151) and in spatial terms relates to staying at the tourism destination.
The most important content at this stage is the visual one. The tourist can write stories about
the destination back home, but he/she can only produce images of the destination while
actually being in the geographic location. The visual TCC provides valuable insights into the
ways in which tourists contribute to image formation. TCC produced at this stage relates to
the core of the tourism industry offering: for example, reviews of attractions,
accommodations and other types of services at the destination. Content created during
this stage document the tourist’s ongoing perceptions of the trip, and their narrative texts
and visual content are presented as a combination of published travel diaries and virtual
postcards. The content displayed aims to give an impression of reality or authenticity,
compared to the manipulated or inauthentic commercial version of the destination. However,
this reality of TCC is embedded in Internet cultures and is dependent on both the limitations
of site architecture and the personal gaze and cultural background of the tourist.
Destination branding is about focus, coherence, the establishment of attributes and image
formation. However, TCC at the animation stage reveals the lack of control that DMOs have
on their own tourist destination product. A tourist with a combined mobile and photo/video
phone can show any detail of a destination to the rest of the world, 24 hours a day. It is
possible to consider TCCas a formof global late-modern risk. Global risks are characterized
by being de-localized, incalculable and non-compensable (Beck, 1992). TCCoccurs thanks
to the de-localized web, because its impact is not limited to a speci?c geographical space.
The impact is incalculable, because it is dif?cult to measure the consequences of a negative
video or a terrible review on a destination, and non-compensable because a scienti?c
control of all the dangers and consequences of TCC does not seem possible. Furthermore,
TCC allows tourists to send instant, real-time information about any problem, deception or
situation experienced at the destination.
This situation is the realization of a surveillance society whereby ‘‘big brother’’ is no longer
the state or any authoritarian bureaucracy, but thousands of web-empowered tourism
consumers. The perception of risk is also increased by the impossibility of knowing which of
these billions of pieces of information may end up having a viral impact and reach thousands
of other consumers, and which ones will just get lost in the massive amount of virtual
information. TCC brings destination branding to a new level of transparency.
Finally, a very relevant phase in TCC is the ‘‘incorporation’’ phase. At this stage the tourist
returns to his/her place of residence and daily life activities. This phase corresponds, in
many cases, to the post-purchase and post-experience phase, in which tourists upload texts
presenting their opinions and memories of the travel experience. Many of the sites studied
show a very high level of activity at this stage, making the initiatives and strategies related to
the post-purchase extremely important for tourism businesses or DMOs. The analysis of
UGC cannot verify the locations from where the tourists created and uploaded their
contributions. However, the use of past tense (we were, we travelled to, etc) and temporal
indications (last week, last month, etc) in the narrative contributions points towards the
importance of the post-experience for destination branding and TCC.
Rethinking destination branding
DMOs face the challenge of TCC using three different strategies: mimetic, advertising
(Figure 1) and analytic (Figure 2). The ?rst type of strategy is mimetic. In this strategy, a DMO
copies the style and e-culture of social network sites to create its own web site. The
organization pursues this strategy by opening its of?cial web site to TCC and enhancing the
creation, uploading and downloading of content by tourists. The mimetic strategy is a type of
conservative strategy, which is characterized by the organization keeping the main locus of
control of web content on the organization. Nevertheless, this option offers only a narrow
opening for contribution from users. This strategy pursues the establishment of a fake social
network, the main reason still being the of?cial promotion of the destination and not the
user-to-user communication. Some examples of these strategies are DMOs’ web sites that
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invite users to write about their destination experiences or to upload/download photos or
videos about their travels.
The analysis shows many different initiatives that share this type of strategy, for example the
‘‘Videoblog for Visit Britain’’ initiative, ‘‘Your Words’’ in New Zealand’s site or ‘‘Your
Copenhagen’’ in Wonderful Copenhagen’s portal. Some other tools allow tourists to share
of?cial brand content with their social networks by exporting the information to Facebook,
Twitter, MySpace, etc. This strategy targets tourists, who are experiencing or have
experienced the destination, in the animation, repatriation and incorporation components.
This approach pays little attention to the corporation component.
The mimetic strategy is an easy and less expensive way to participate in Web 2.0 and it
allows DMO to keep control of the TCC displayed, because the organization can remove
unwanted or inappropriate content. However, this approach has several weaknesses. A
corporate site representing a brand has a very different logic from social network sites that
provide value-managing user contributions, and that have an e-culture based on unclear
rules of ownership and openness of content. This strategy achieves some level of
participation by tourists, but has a poor scalability and does not bene?t from the massive
volume of contributions that are taking place in the most popular social network sites such as
TripAdvisor, IgoUgo, Youtube, Facebook, etc.
The second strategy, the advertising strategy, follows traditional and conservative ways of
dealing with social network sites and TCC. This strategy understands the new sites as
advertising platforms. It uses banners and other possibilities of advertising of the sites.
DMOs include advertisements of their newcampaigns in social network sites that allow it, for
Figure 1 Mimetic and advertising strategic model of destination branding and TCC
Figure 2 Analytic strategic model of destination branding and TCC
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example: Dopplr, Wayn, Facebook, etc. Another example is the increased use of news
related to microblogging in Twitter, with 350 DMOs active on that site in June 2009 (Go Sell
Tell, 2009). DMO microblogging is still mostly based on a one-way communication from the
DMO (Hubard, 2009). This strategy increases the social media presence of the DMO and
their brands. However, the organization does not bene?t from the pool of information
provided by TCC. These initiatives only re-direct the ads and news to those sites with the
largest traf?c of users, or increase the volume of DMO information on those sites.
The analytic strategy has two main dimensions: prevention and knowledge. Through
prevention DMOs try to understand how TCC develops in relation to their brands and then
prevent crises or take action to minimize damage or improve marketing. This dimension does
not need very advanced ICTsystems or interdisciplinary knowledge. The initiatives are applied
by using consultancy ?rms or webmasters to search and monitor how social network sites
portray the destination and report back to the DMOs’ departments. An example of this strategy
is GoSellTell’s monitoring of Twitter for DMOs, such as Travel Portland (Go Sell Tell, 2009).
The second dimension, knowledge, is seldom a feature. This aspect is highly demanding
and implies investments in ICT development and training, and a concerted innovation effort
from an organizational perspective. Nevertheless, this strategy allows DMOs to transform
massive and chaotic amounts of TCC into strategic knowledge. This transformation can be
achieved thanks to the possibilities of the advanced search engines and arti?cial
intelligence.
The analytic strategy has the opposite logic to that of the mimetic or advertising strategies.
This approach does not aim to fake social network sites on corporation sites or to enhance
traditional commercial campaigns with new tools. The analytic strategy is based on the
massive amount of TCC that is already available via the web and is extremely ?exible,
because this tactic follows the tourists to where they contribute. Furthermore, an analytic
perspective considers all the different stages of the tourism experience from corporation to
incorporation. Analytics use ICT to examine, select, classify, monitor and evaluate TCC.
The previous analysis showed how TCC could be considered to be a new type of global risk
for the management of destination branding. None of the strategies mentioned above can
totally manage this type of risk. However, the analytic strategy that is based on monitoring
and trend analysis is a valuable tool in forecasting and therefore may be more useful in risk
analysis.
An example of this strategy is the case of the project ‘‘Travel 2.0 promotion in Asia and
Paci?c’’ developed by the Scandinavian Tourism Board, Asia-Paci?c (STB). The project is
based on two main tools:
1. the search engine; and
2. the knowledge exchange database.
The search engine allows Asian tourists to examine, select and rank digital creative content
relating to Scandinavia. The knowledge exchange database stores, classi?es and structures
the content. This tool gives administrators and partners of the project access to historical
data, and enables users to examine tourismtrends and patterns over periods of time, as well
as statistical and graphical representations of TCC. It also allows DMOs’ sites to publish
selected content. The development of these tools demands a high level of interdisciplinary
skills. In this case, tourism researchers provide semantic classi?cations and segmentations;
STB managers monitor the functionality of the database and the coordination among four
different DMOs, and ICT researchers handle software and search speci?cations. Managers
in Asia translate these texts into local languages. All of these tasks develop through a
constant dialogue between the different disciplines and by combining practical and
theoretical knowledge. For example, the project allows tourism managers to monitor the
trends in Japanese or Korean tourists’ perceptions of a destination like Oslo, to identify
increases or decreases in interest in speci?c attractions or types of tourism (e.g. nature
tourism or spa-wellness tourism), to select TCC with positive stories about the destination as
part of their branding campaigns, or to examine negative TCC for quality management.
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Analytic strategy in relation to TCC means viewing tourist contributions on the Web as a pool
of knowledge. It has enormous potential as an active tool in helping DMOs to understand the
image formation of their destinations’ brands. However, this demands the enhancement of
skills and competences of those responsible for destination branding. Furthermore, a type of
destination branding tailored mainly by the wishes and desires of tourists, as expressed
through their TCC, is problematic. The danger is that the host community and other local
stakeholders may lose their in?uence on the destination brand. The local community is not an
active participant of TCC. The analytic strategy focuses on tourists’ wishes and behavior
and, thus, other mechanisms will have to ensure local communities’ participation in these
processes. Without compensating analytics with participation, the brand may become both
an international success and a local catastrophe.
Conclusion
The purpose of this study is to broaden knowledge of the relationship between TCC and
destination branding and to contribute to a better understanding of the strategies that DMOs
use in relation to TCC. This explorative study relies on qualitative research methods, content
analysis and ?eld research. It examines a sample of relevant social network sites, the
majority with a clear tourism focus. The ?ndings allow the classi?cation of formal elements of
the destination brand and image formation in relation to the different genres and types of
TCC. The analysis of the use of destination brands in TCC shows that tourists do not
incorporate the formal elements of the brands in their story-telling and experience sharing of
destinations. Elements such as taglines, slogans or logos are virtually non-existent as part of
TCC. However, tourists are extremely active in destination image formation through their
narrative, visual and audio contributions. These results point towards the embedding of user
contribution systems and TCCin Internet cultures with strong anti-commercial backgrounds,
such as the hacker culture or the open source movement (Castells, 2001).
The paper explains the different ways in which tourists may relate to destination branding
when producing and uploading TCC during their tourismexperience. The analysis based on
the tourism model (Jafari, 1987) shows that traditionally destination management
organizations have focused on the incorporation stage. However, at this stage tourists are
watchers rather than active contributors of TCC. During this ?rst stage, TCC developed by
other tourists can be expected to have the largest impact. The animation, repatriation and
incorporation components are those stages that show the highest activity of TCC in
destination image formation. TCCat the animation stage shows the lack of control that DMOs
have on the tourist destination product. Mobile and audiovisual technology, combined with
Web 2.0, turns TCC into a new type of global late-modern risk that is characterized by being
de-localized, incalculable and non-compensable. Furthermore, TCC shows how tourists are
active contributors to a new version of a surveillance society where the big brother is
thousands of web empowered tourism consumers.
The study presented three different strategies used by DMOs in relation to TCC and
destination branding. The three strategies are the mimetic, the advertising and the analytic.
The mimetic strategy is conservative and its main instrument is the introduction of Web 2.0
tools which allow for the inclusion of TCC in DMOs’ web sites. This strategy provides a fake
imitation of the logic of social network sites without changing the locus of control, which still
remains in the organization and not in the users. The organization does not bene?t from the
amount of TCC available on the web. The advertising strategy focuses on the corporation
component and enters social network sites by placing traditional ads or news. This type of
strategy only bene?ts from TCC as a platform for increased awareness.
Analytics is a very demanding strategic proposal based on the intensive use of IT. This
strategy has two dimensions, the ?rst focusing on monitoring and prevention and the second
focusing on knowledge. The latest allows DMOs to transform massive amounts of TCC into
strategic knowledge by using the possibilities of the web and arti?cial intelligence tools. The
analysis of the project ‘‘Travel 2.0 promotion in Asia and Paci?c’’ shows the strengths of this
strategy but also indicates some of the possible dangers such as lack of community
involvement.
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The paper demonstrates the schismbetween traditional destination branding and the image
formation enhanced by TCC. Tourists do not use the formal elements of the destination
brands. If TCC gains in intensity and impact capacity, user contributions may challenge the
capacity of destination branding to tailor and frame the image of the destination. This
exploratory study is a call for further research on a topic that is still highly unexplored. Further
analysis should focus on several main issues: the possible combinations of different
strategic agendas for the use of TCC in destination branding, the analysis of TCC and risk,
the impact of these developments on the involvement of local communities, and the
challenges of the analytic model for traditional DMO management.
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Corresponding author
Ana Mar? ´a Munar can be contacted at: [email protected]
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doc_739900838.pdf
The purpose of this paper is to analyze the relationship between tourists’ user-generated
content on the web and destination branding, as well as to discuss the online strategies used by
destination management organizations
International Journal of Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research
Tourist-created content: rethinking destination branding
Ana María Munar
Article information:
To cite this document:
Ana María Munar, (2011),"Tourist-created content: rethinking destination branding", International J ournal of Culture, Tourism and Hospitality
Research, Vol. 5 Iss 3 pp. 291 - 305
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Tourist-created content: rethinking
destination branding
Ana Mar? ´a Munar
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyze the relationship between tourists’ user-generated
content on the web and destination branding, as well as to discuss the online strategies used by
destination management organizations.
Design/methodology/approach – The research adopts an exploratory study of social media sites and
destination brands, relying on qualitative research methods, content analysis and ?eld research.
Findings – Tourists are largely contributing to destination image formation, while avoiding the use of the
formal elements of the brands. The most popular strategies used by destination management
organizations exhibit some crucial weaknesses. However, a strategy based on analytics brings new
opportunities for destination branding.
Originality/value – The study provides an innovative analysis of tourist-created content and its impact
on destination branding and presents a theoretical model of generic web-based strategies.
Keywords Destination branding, User-generated content, Information technology, Tourism
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Information and communication technologies (ICT) are of great importance in understanding
the development of today’s tourism destinations (Buhalis and Law, 2008). Their impact is
considerable in the branding of tourism products in general and in the branding of
destinations in particular. However, a review of the literature reveals minimal knowledge
related to the impact of one of the latest developments in ICT, the popular phenomenon
known as ‘‘Web 2.0,’’ on destination branding. This term describes a Web which is
‘‘increasingly in?uenced by intelligent Web services that empower users to contribute to
developing, rating, collaborating and distributing Internet content and customizing Internet
applications’’ (Vickery and Wunsch-Vincent, 2007, p. 9). These forms of virtual social
communication are based on Content Management Systemsoftware (Stillman and McGrath,
2008) and include a mixture of different tools such as blogs, wikis, podcasts, messaging
applications and others which are meant to encourage the sharing of information.
Web 2.0 tools are widely used by tourists to get information about tourism destinations and to
share their tourismexperiences. The digital content provided by these tourists has increasingly
in?uenced destination awareness and image creation (Tussyadiah and Fesenmaier, 2009). This
development is due to the following factors: more powerful and affordable hardware and
software, a faster network edge, advances in easy-to-use tools for creating and sharing
content, a higher e-literacy in the population of the world, and the increase of portable and
wireless platforms (Parameswaran and Whinston, 2007). These factors entail a change in the
locus of control of the creation process of the online branding of destinations. Nowadays, web
branding content, previously controlled by organizations and corporations, is to a larger extent
the expression of the interaction and participation of end-users.
DOI 10.1108/17506181111156989 VOL. 5 NO. 3 2011, pp. 291-305, Q Emerald Group Publishing Limited, ISSN 1750-6182
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INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CULTURE, TOURISM AND HOSPITALITY RESEARCH
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PAGE 291
Ana Mar? ´a Munar is an
Associate Professor at
Copenhagen Business
School, Frederiksberg,
Denmark.
Received: June 2009
Revised: June 2010
Accepted: June 2010
The author thanks the Nordic
Innovation Center for research
funding, and Carina Hallin and
Bjarke Møller for reading and
providing comments to this
manuscript.
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One of the main characteristics of the Web 2.0 turn is that it enables user generated content
(UGC). UGC refers to the information that is digitalized, uploaded by the users and made
available through the internet. This paper focuses on a speci?c type of user generated
content: tourist created content (TCC). The study departs from ?ndings presented in earlier
studies on TCC (Munar, 2010) and analyzes the impact of TCC on destination branding.
A large number of researchers focus on how the technological revolution of ICT has
transformed tourism (Buhalis and Law, 2008) and several studies analyze the interrelation
between destinations, consumer searches and ICT (Fodness and Murray, 1997; Bonn et al.,
1999; Weber and Roehl, 1999; Buhalis, 1998; Luo et al., 2004; Werthner and Ricci, 2004;
Fr? ´as et al., 2008; Li et al., 2009; Weinberg, 2009). Tourism research has many relevant
studies relating to destination branding (Gartner, 1986; Cai, 2002; Ooi, 2004; Konecnik and
Gartner, 2007; Murphy et al., 2007; Marzano and Scott, 2009), but a speci?c focus on UGC
and destination branding is missing. Nevertheless, several social scientists focus on the
Internet as a factor of social, cultural and economic change (Castells, 1996, 1997, 2001;
Poster, 2006; Basu et al., 2007; Schwanen and Kwan, 2008; Stillman and McGrath, 2008)
and on the importance of UGC (Lenhart and Fox, 2006; Cooke and Buckley, 2008; Lenhart
et al., 2008). Dellarocas (2003) analyzes the consequences of the digitalization of
word-of-mouth, a relevant factor concerning destination image formation, and several
popular books cover the issue of social media and business management (Qualman, 2009;
Weinberg, 2009).
Most of the knowledge and sources available on the topic of Web 2.0 and UGCin tourismare
organizational reports or newspaper and magazine articles, many of which contain
information provided by web sources and consultancy ?rms, weakening their level of
reliability and validity. Although tourism research has interesting contributions on the topic of
the internet and tourism branding, the impact of TCC and destination branding remains
unexplored.
Tourist created content and destination branding
UGC is the aggregation and leveraging of users’ contributions on the web. UGC is the digital
transformation of cultural objects: text, sounds and images (Poster, 2006). Several de?nitions
and classi?cations of this content exist in the literature (Cook, 2008; Cooke and Buckley, 2008;
Deshpande and Jadad, 2006; Lenhart and Fox, 2006; Stillman and McGrath, 2008; Vickery
and Wunsch-Vincent, 2007; Wellman, 2007; World Tourism Organization, 2008). Cook (2008)
de?nes UGC as a part of broader user contribution systems. These systems ‘‘aggregate and
leverage various types of user input in ways that are valuable to others’’ (p. 62) and consist of
various types of contributions: active contributions (aggregating content or items for sale) and
passive contributions (aggregating behavioral data or resources). Vickery and
Wunsch-Vincent’s (2007) analysis of the participative web provides a difference between
UGC and user created content (UCC) and focuses on the creative element of the content
generation. Tourist created content refers to the active and creative contributions of tourists on
the web (Munar, 2010). Many of the tools related to UGC(e.g. blogs, podcasts, wikis, etc.) are
used by tourismcorporations and organizations to increase and enhance interaction with their
employees/members and the connectivity with suppliers and other business partners.
However, an analysis of this business-to-business perspective would lie beyond the aims of
this study. The focus of this research is on the participative end-user, the tourist and the impact
of his/her contributions to destination branding.
The importance of the UGC is evident in the fact that a number of companies, which
intensively use Web 2.0 tools, are already among the top ten most visited sites by US internet
users: eBay (n.7), Amazon (n.8), Wikimedia Foundation (n. 9) (Nielsen, 2008). Youtube, eBay
and Wikipedia are also listed as numbers six, eight and 10 in the ranking of the top 10 brands
(Nielsen, 2008). Data from ?rms measuring Internet traf?c show high levels of concentration
on some of the most important UGC web sites: MySpace, having 64 percent of the market
share of the US and YouTube, accounting for 75 percent of all U.S. visits in May 2008 among
a customcategory of 63 online video web sites (Hitwise, 2008). Facebook announced a total
of 200 million members in March 2009 (Stone, 2009).
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The proportion of TCC on speci?c tourism sites examined in this study is also very large.
TripAdvisor received more than 25 million visits during the month of July 2008 (Weisman,
2008); Wayn is a community site with 13 million members (The Times, 2009); and
Virtualtourist has more than 1,100,000 members, over 1,700,000 reviews and 3,500,100
photos (Virtualtourist, 2009).
While UGC is a massive phenomenon, not everybody is an active virtual contributor. Castells
(2001) argues that countries’ unequal distributions of wealth, education and technological
infrastructure have led to great territorial diversity, which characterizes the use of the
Internet. Other critical perspectives on UGC address the lack of quality of content as well as
issues of identity theft (Aspan, 2008; Keen, 2007; Poster, 2006; Stillman and McGrath, 2008).
Destination branding
An intense competition among destinations characterizes tourism today (Kim and
Fesenmaier, 2008). Globalization processes (Munar, 2009), an increased interest in place
(Anholt, 2003), and destination branding are key factors that have contributed to an increase
in this competition (Cai, 2002; Konecnik and Gartner, 2007; Murphy et al., 2007; Pike, 2004).
Several authors discuss the differences between product or service branding and the
branding of a destination (Cai et al., 2009; Marzano and Scott, 2009; Ooi, 2004).
Destinations are more complex and diverse than speci?c tourism products (Ooi and
Stoeber, 2010). The creation of a destination brand has to address multiple groups of
stakeholders, socio-cultural identities and take into consideration the intangibility and
multifaceted features of a destination.
The image and the brand of a destination are two distinct concepts. However, the brand’s
existence is dependent on the image formation of the destination (Cai, 2002). The image
‘‘represents the sum of beliefs, attitudes, and impressions that a person or group has of an
object’’ (Nadeau et al., 2008, p. 84). The image of a destination is owned by tourists and
permeated by the socio-cultural and economic changes that impact on their sensitiveness.
The organic evolution of the image, which is brought about by word-of-mouth and all other
types of information received about the destination, is different fromthe induced evolution of
the image that results from destination management organizations’ (DMO) brand promotion
(Gartner, 1986).
Destinations compete through the images held in the minds of potential tourists (Baloglu and
McCleary, 1999). However, DMOs do not have control over the speci?c attributes of the
tourism experience. Therefore, their main effort is in brand awareness and image formation.
This lack of ownership of the destination product makes the taglines, slogans, logos and
commercial campaigns the focus of the destination brand and represents the formal
elements of the brand. Tourists relate to the destination brand by participating in image
formation and by adopting and using these formal elements in their different types of
generated content on the web.
Methodology
This paper is an exploratory study of tourist created content, a speci?c subtype of UGC, and
destination branding. The study relies on qualitative research methods, including textual
analysis through documentary studies of web content and ?eld research, based on the
project ‘‘Travel 2.0 promotion in Asia and Paci?c’’, conducted by the Scandinavian Tourism
Board Asia/Paci?c. The theoretical background of the study is founded in the literature of ICT
in tourism, in the more general literature of branding and destination management, and other
related social sciences on the evolution and impact of the internet. Other literature consulted
during the study includes documents and reports provided by organizations which study
ICT’s usage and development.
The research design had several phases. The ?rst phase, based on preliminary studies,
involved designing a classi?cation system. This task included: ?rst, the establishment of a
sample of destination brands and a theoretical sample of web sites based on rankings of
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social media sites (Comscore, 2009; Hitwise, 2008); second, the examination of content of
the sites according to the classi?cation of the UGC of sites as developed by Munar (2010);
and third, the selection and analysis of a larger sample of sites based on a larger literature
review. The sampling focused on sites that indicated the use and development of UGC as
primary purpose (not including sites of organizations which display Web 2.0 tools to a minor
degree) and to tourism related sites. The great majority of the analyzed sites are online
communities and social network sites. Sample of web sites and tourist-created content
(TCC) are:
B Blogabond.com
B Couchsur?ng.org
B Dopplr.com
B Gowander.com
B Hostelz.com
B IgoUgo.com
B iTourist.com
B Lonelyplanet.com (Thorn Tree)
B Travelblog.org
B Travelersfortravelers.com
B Travelistic.com
B Travelpod.com
B Tripadvisor.com
B Trip?lms.com
B Trustedplaces.com
B Virtualtourist.com
B Wayn.com
B Worldreviewer.com
B Digg.com
B Facebook.com
B Flickr.com
B Myspace.com
B Twitter.com
B Youtube.com
B IsAnyoneGoingTo.com
B Liftshare.com
The sampling considered many tourism and travel sites but many were also eliminated from
the sample, either because of their high commercial focus or because their prime content
was based on blogs provided by experts and not open to all tourists in general
(e.g. gridskipper.com, the coolhunter.com or spottedbylocals.com). These sites were
compared to the sample of 19 main destination brands: 18 national brands and one US state
brand.
The second phase included developing a model of strategic analysis. The model identi?ed
how DMOs try to bene?t from TCC and examined the relationship of TCC to destination
branding in each one of the stages of the tourism experience. The strategic analysis was
based on the work conducted during the project ‘‘Travel 2.0 promotion in Asia and Paci?c’’.
This project, which began in January 2009, includes the development of a Web 2.0 platform
for the Asian tourism market for the Scandinavian Tourism Board.
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The focus of the research is tourist created content and destination branding. The study
introduces some explanations related to other generated content in order to understand the
general phenomenon. The rapid change in the patterns of internet use, as well as the
fragmentation and massive amount of data associated with the object of analysis,
represents a challenge to the study of the web. However, the complexity of web analysis
does not make this study any less relevant. The aim here is not to map all the possibilities of
TCC, but to contribute to a wider understanding of how tourists’ contributions on the web
in?uences destination branding.
Brand, image formation and types of tourist created content
Tourists create three main categories of digitalized content: narrative, visual and audio.
Tourists use these different types of content to refer to the destination brand. The written
expression of the destination brand is the name of the destination combined with a word, a
tagline or slogan, as in the following cases:
B Denmark – ‘‘Feel Free’’;
B Greece – ‘‘The True Experience’’;
B Thailand – ‘‘Amazing Thailand’’;
B South Africa – ‘‘It’s Possible’’;
B Italy – ‘‘Much More’’; or
B Singapore – ‘‘Uniquely Singapore’’.
In some cases the name of the brand is the same as the name of the DMO (e.g. Visit
Sweden). Tourists can use the written expression of the brand employing different narrative
genres (Table I). These genres represent a continuum from a more descriptive and
objectivistic narrative (the encyclopedic) on the one hand, to a more subjective and personal
narrative (the diary) on the other. (For in-depth analyses of the genres, see Munar (2010).)
The ?uidity of genres, and of media, characterizes TCC. This ?uidity makes it very dif?cult to
monitor and control all the possible ways in which the different formal elements of the brand
may appear in TCC. Furthermore, the different contents use hypertext at different levels, with
links to other sites or documents available in the cyberworld. In addition, depending on the
system architecture of the site, the tourists’ narrative contributions remain open to other
users’ contributions. For example, some of the sites allow users to grade how useful the
information provided in the review is or to give general comments. The views of these
contributors and technological platforms on copyright or authorship are highly informal, with
frequent use of pseudonyms and nicknames. The features of openness and collaborative
content are embedded in the system. Therefore, it can be argued that TCC is about
communication and personal expression and the content encourages both the knowledge
sharing of tourism products and the sociability of the tourism experience.
Table I Brand, destination image and TCC
Tourist-created content
Destination branding formal
elements Destination image formation
Narrative (encyclopedic,
review, travel diary, blog,
microblog)
Narrative identity: Slogans,
taglines, brand name
Narrative text of the
impressions, beliefs and
attitudes on the destination
experience
Visual (photography and video) Visual identity: Logo, advertising
campaigns (photos or video)
Images of the destination
experience
Audio (narrative and/or
musical)
Audio advertising campaigns
(music or text)
Audio stories about the
destination experience
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Narrative genres and destination branding
This section provides an analysis of TCC and destination branding examining four different
genres: encyclopedic, review, diary and blog. The encyclopedic genre is based on
knowledge sharing with a form of peer-review or critical evaluation of the content. One
example is Wikitravel, ‘‘a project to create a free, complete, up to date and reliable
worldwide travel guide’’ (Wikitravel, 2008). The encyclopedic feature of TCC increases the
amount of tourism information available, with a focus on a traditional socio-geographical
perspective. Tourists’ encyclopedic content uses the destination name, either without the
use of tags or slogans associated with it, or without any visual characteristics of the brand,
such as logos. This genre provides an image of objectivity and neutrality and avoids any
commercial-like expressions, such as slogans. For example, in this type of content Spain is
expressed as ‘‘Spain’’ and not as ‘‘Smile you are in Spain’’, which is the slogan of the
country’s latest destination branding campaign; Copenhagen is expressed as
‘‘Copenhagen’’ and not as ‘‘Wonderful Copenhagen’’ or the most recent brand of
‘‘C-Open-hagen’’. The focus is on reliable and free-from-commercial-interests information on
the destination. This content is destination-, not product-oriented. The type of destination
presented in this content is not an emotive one, as attributes of a psychological or emotional
type associated to the brand image are seldom.
The review genre is based on the critical evaluation of a tourism product or experience. A
very popular site which relies mainly on this genre is TripAdvisor. This is a type of genre
which creates a lot of concern among tourism suppliers. The main focus of this type of
content is not the destination brand but brands of tourism products. This content has a
commercial bias. A large majority of the content examines and rates suppliers of hospitality,
attractions, travel and transport products and services. Although the focus of the review
genre is not on the destination as a whole but on speci?c tourism products, the composite
nature of the tourism experience also makes this type of TCC very pertinent to the overall
image formation of the destination brand.
In the architecture of the sites the focus is on the geographical name and not on the narrative
associated with the destination brand. Different destination brands were compared to the
sample sites, such as Trip Advisor, Virtual Tourist and IgoUgo. The results show that tourists
do not use the brand name, the taglines, or other similar formal elements in their review
content. At the same time, the ?ndings show thousands of results when using the
geographical name of the destination. This name acts as an umbrella for the different tourism
products. For example, when searching Copenhagen in TripAdvisor, the information
displayed is not related to the of?cial brand. The main title that appears is ‘‘visiting the city of
Copenhagen’’, combined with links to other reviews on accommodation, attractions, etc. In
the case of Spain the destination is announced as ‘‘visiting Spain’’, and the same pattern
applies to other destinations. Again, as in the previous case, the of?cial brand name, tagline
or slogans are all missing. In the case of IgoUgo the word Italy has more than 2,000 reviews
linked and France receives over 1,900 reviews. Both cases display zero results when
searching the national brand, ‘‘Rendez-vous en France’’ or ‘‘Italy – Much more’’. The brand
‘‘Uniquely Singapore’’ receives zero results, while the geographical name has more than 600
reviews linked. ‘‘Amazing Thailand’’ has one speci?c review(a tourist that commented on the
destination’s of?cial web site), while Thailand has more than 1,120.
The diary genre (or travel journal) relates to the narrative explanation of the personal
experience of the travel. This genre is also very popular on the web and is mostly expressed
in the form of travel blogs at the different sites. The formal elements of destination brands
with their taglines and slogans are mostly missing fromthis type of content. For example, the
new brand of Greece, ‘‘Greece, the true experience’’, does not generate any results in travel
diary sites such as Travelersfortravelers or Gowander. However, this type of content displays
a strong focus on destination image formation. The diary genre includes a large amount of
narrative content. This content communicates the experience of the destination, including
emotional and personal perceptions, beliefs and attitudes.
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The general blog genre displays a similar tendency. Blogs have a high use of the
geographical name and image formation and a minimum reference to the brand formal
elements. This type of content relates to individual opinions about speci?c issues (Ryu et al.,
2009). This genre is a mixed-genre which contains many elements related to the diary, but
can also contain encyclopedic knowledge and review passages. The examination of
blogging sites (e.g. Travelblog) shows many references to some of the formal narrative
brand elements, for example, ‘‘Amazing Thailand’’. However, these blogs are written by
organizations, not by tourists, and are therefore not TCC.
Visual and audio content and destination branding
The visual content has two main types:
1. photographic; and
2. audiovisual.
This UGC is a popular form of contribution in tourism sites. The visual expression also has
different genres and appears combined with hypertext and other forms of expression, such
as the use of titles, descriptions attached to images, tags on photos, etc. Some of the most
popular general sites for video and photo sharing are Flickr, Youtube or Travelistic. Many of
the images on these sites have a real life approach, without any or only a minimum amount of
manipulation. This form of content makes a very powerful contribution to destination image
formation. The main content and focus of these visual contributions is on the personal
experience and not on the formal visual elements of the brand. Some of these sites, like
Youtube, are not tourism speci?c and, therefore, the information provided about the
destinations does not necessarily have a tourism focus. Destination managers upload visual
content advertising the brand in many of these social network sites (e.g. Amazing Thailand in
Travelistic or 100% pure New Zealand in Youtube). However, these corporative contributions
do not qualify as TCC. The audio content is to be found in the form of podcasts. This type of
UGC is increasingly popular, thanks to the iPod and other mobile technologies. This content
shows different combinations of multiple media. Audio content is seldom in the sample of
web sites studied.
Examination of the web sites and different destination brands show that tourists do not use
the brands’ formal elements. At the same time, tourists are extremely active in destination
image formation. The destination brand’s taglines, slogans, logos, video or audio advertising
are not essential parts of TCC. An extensive analysis of social network sites shows that the
image formations provided by TCC are simply a large collage of digitalized personal
expressions that do not have any structured commercial goals. The tendency to focus on the
destination image and ignore the destination brand formal elements can be a conscious
decision made by the tourist in order to appear independent from commercial interests. This
could be a consequence of TCC being embedded in Internet cultures with a strong
anti-commercial background, such as the hacker culture or the open source movement
(Castells, 2001). Another possible explanation is the lack of reach of today’s destination
branding campaigns in relation to the TCC target group.
Digitalization of the tourism experience
TCC has expanded the ways by which tourists see and interpret the world. Traditionally,
tourism conceptualization resulted from a basic binary division of the ordinary/everyday and
the extraordinary (Jafari, 1987). However, modern sociological analysis challenges the
assumption of the separation between home and away (Franklin and Crang, 2001; Larsen
et al., 2007). According to Jansson (2002) tourism is intertwined with the consumption of
media images the tourism industry and the culture industry create. TCC is a new form of
mediation in the creation of the tourismexperience, which neither represents the industry nor
the cultural industry, but which airs people’s personal re?exive considerations of the tourism
experience. TCC functions as virtual mediator.
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Jafari’s (1987) tourism model identi?es several components representing the different
stages of the tourism experience:
1. Corporation.
2. Emancipation.
3. Animation.
4. Repatriation.
5. Incorporation.
TCC takes place during the different stages of the tourism experience and has different
types of impact on the destination brand. In the ‘‘corporation’’ component the tourist-to-be is
in a search position and this stage corresponds to the pre-purchase and decision-making
phases. Destination marketing campaigns largely focus on pre-purchase stages. Therefore,
of?cial channels of information about the destinations that make intensive use of the formal
elements of the brand compete with the social networks of tourist-to-tourist communication
and their focus on multilateral image formation.
The destination brand tries to induce the person to choose a speci?c destination among all
others (Gartner, 1986). The brand enhances recognition and awareness within the huge
amount of information available. To achieve this, traditional destination branding utilizes
marketing campaigns while depending heavily on the word-of-mouth and the organic image
of the destination. The introduction of the web expands these strategies to include active
web sites with a locus of control on DMOs and extensive web marketing tools.
The Web 2.0 and, speci?cally, TCC increase the channels of communication with the
consumer base in tourism generating regions. However, this new channel of communication
presents several challenges to DMOs. TCC implies the digitalization of the word-of-mouth
mechanisms that are so powerful in shaping tourism demand. The Web 2.0 expands the
word-of-mouth through a global distribution system of information. The locus of control of
communication is no longer on a business-to-customer basis but largely on a
customer-to-customer. The Nielsen Global Online Consumer Survey (Nielsen, 2009) of
over 25,000 online consumers from 50 countries found that opinions posted by consumers
online are among the most trusted forms of advertising globally.
In the search position stage the tourism consumer (tourist-to-be) is only in search mode, a
self-re?ecting watcher of destinations, and is not actively uploading images, texts or videos of
the destination. Rather, the tourist-to-be is looking for information and is enriching his/her image
of the destination. TCC during ‘‘corporation’’ includes blogs and other types of content (audio
and/or visual podcasts) that refer to the desire and motivation to travel and the possibilities or
impossibilities of doing so. TCC works as an important complement to the knowledge and
opinions the tourist-to-be has about a speci?c destination. Therefore, the TCC on destinations
provided by tourists who already have visited the destination may have the largest impact at
this stage, by affecting other users’ motivation for travel and purchase choices.
‘‘ Emancipation’’ is the second component of the model. This stage refers to the physical
journey to the tourist destination as well as the mental travelling – entering into ‘‘touristhood.’’
The TCCat this stage corresponds to the content produced and uploaded during the physical
travel to the destination. Destination branding has a weak interest on transportation sites.
Usually, destination brands, like the ones examined in this study, focus on the cultural, social
and natural features of the destination. Transportation sites are regarded as facilitators of the
travel experience but are still standardized international places without much local ?avor.
The ‘‘repatriation’’ is, due to its focus on transport and the movement in space, very similar to
the emancipation component. However, the psychological perspective of this stage is very
different. During repatriation tourists create and share content on the Web that indicates their
satisfaction or disappointment with the destination experience. The empirical experience of
the destination, with all its features and products, transforms tourists’ images of the
destination, as well as their brand perception, and a modi?ed image takes form in the
tourist’s mind. At this stage TCC can re?ect a more complete image of the destination.
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The ‘‘animation’’ component corresponds to the ‘‘tourist doing tourism in his animated
world’’ (Jafari, 1987, p. 151) and in spatial terms relates to staying at the tourism destination.
The most important content at this stage is the visual one. The tourist can write stories about
the destination back home, but he/she can only produce images of the destination while
actually being in the geographic location. The visual TCC provides valuable insights into the
ways in which tourists contribute to image formation. TCC produced at this stage relates to
the core of the tourism industry offering: for example, reviews of attractions,
accommodations and other types of services at the destination. Content created during
this stage document the tourist’s ongoing perceptions of the trip, and their narrative texts
and visual content are presented as a combination of published travel diaries and virtual
postcards. The content displayed aims to give an impression of reality or authenticity,
compared to the manipulated or inauthentic commercial version of the destination. However,
this reality of TCC is embedded in Internet cultures and is dependent on both the limitations
of site architecture and the personal gaze and cultural background of the tourist.
Destination branding is about focus, coherence, the establishment of attributes and image
formation. However, TCC at the animation stage reveals the lack of control that DMOs have
on their own tourist destination product. A tourist with a combined mobile and photo/video
phone can show any detail of a destination to the rest of the world, 24 hours a day. It is
possible to consider TCCas a formof global late-modern risk. Global risks are characterized
by being de-localized, incalculable and non-compensable (Beck, 1992). TCCoccurs thanks
to the de-localized web, because its impact is not limited to a speci?c geographical space.
The impact is incalculable, because it is dif?cult to measure the consequences of a negative
video or a terrible review on a destination, and non-compensable because a scienti?c
control of all the dangers and consequences of TCC does not seem possible. Furthermore,
TCC allows tourists to send instant, real-time information about any problem, deception or
situation experienced at the destination.
This situation is the realization of a surveillance society whereby ‘‘big brother’’ is no longer
the state or any authoritarian bureaucracy, but thousands of web-empowered tourism
consumers. The perception of risk is also increased by the impossibility of knowing which of
these billions of pieces of information may end up having a viral impact and reach thousands
of other consumers, and which ones will just get lost in the massive amount of virtual
information. TCC brings destination branding to a new level of transparency.
Finally, a very relevant phase in TCC is the ‘‘incorporation’’ phase. At this stage the tourist
returns to his/her place of residence and daily life activities. This phase corresponds, in
many cases, to the post-purchase and post-experience phase, in which tourists upload texts
presenting their opinions and memories of the travel experience. Many of the sites studied
show a very high level of activity at this stage, making the initiatives and strategies related to
the post-purchase extremely important for tourism businesses or DMOs. The analysis of
UGC cannot verify the locations from where the tourists created and uploaded their
contributions. However, the use of past tense (we were, we travelled to, etc) and temporal
indications (last week, last month, etc) in the narrative contributions points towards the
importance of the post-experience for destination branding and TCC.
Rethinking destination branding
DMOs face the challenge of TCC using three different strategies: mimetic, advertising
(Figure 1) and analytic (Figure 2). The ?rst type of strategy is mimetic. In this strategy, a DMO
copies the style and e-culture of social network sites to create its own web site. The
organization pursues this strategy by opening its of?cial web site to TCC and enhancing the
creation, uploading and downloading of content by tourists. The mimetic strategy is a type of
conservative strategy, which is characterized by the organization keeping the main locus of
control of web content on the organization. Nevertheless, this option offers only a narrow
opening for contribution from users. This strategy pursues the establishment of a fake social
network, the main reason still being the of?cial promotion of the destination and not the
user-to-user communication. Some examples of these strategies are DMOs’ web sites that
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invite users to write about their destination experiences or to upload/download photos or
videos about their travels.
The analysis shows many different initiatives that share this type of strategy, for example the
‘‘Videoblog for Visit Britain’’ initiative, ‘‘Your Words’’ in New Zealand’s site or ‘‘Your
Copenhagen’’ in Wonderful Copenhagen’s portal. Some other tools allow tourists to share
of?cial brand content with their social networks by exporting the information to Facebook,
Twitter, MySpace, etc. This strategy targets tourists, who are experiencing or have
experienced the destination, in the animation, repatriation and incorporation components.
This approach pays little attention to the corporation component.
The mimetic strategy is an easy and less expensive way to participate in Web 2.0 and it
allows DMO to keep control of the TCC displayed, because the organization can remove
unwanted or inappropriate content. However, this approach has several weaknesses. A
corporate site representing a brand has a very different logic from social network sites that
provide value-managing user contributions, and that have an e-culture based on unclear
rules of ownership and openness of content. This strategy achieves some level of
participation by tourists, but has a poor scalability and does not bene?t from the massive
volume of contributions that are taking place in the most popular social network sites such as
TripAdvisor, IgoUgo, Youtube, Facebook, etc.
The second strategy, the advertising strategy, follows traditional and conservative ways of
dealing with social network sites and TCC. This strategy understands the new sites as
advertising platforms. It uses banners and other possibilities of advertising of the sites.
DMOs include advertisements of their newcampaigns in social network sites that allow it, for
Figure 1 Mimetic and advertising strategic model of destination branding and TCC
Figure 2 Analytic strategic model of destination branding and TCC
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example: Dopplr, Wayn, Facebook, etc. Another example is the increased use of news
related to microblogging in Twitter, with 350 DMOs active on that site in June 2009 (Go Sell
Tell, 2009). DMO microblogging is still mostly based on a one-way communication from the
DMO (Hubard, 2009). This strategy increases the social media presence of the DMO and
their brands. However, the organization does not bene?t from the pool of information
provided by TCC. These initiatives only re-direct the ads and news to those sites with the
largest traf?c of users, or increase the volume of DMO information on those sites.
The analytic strategy has two main dimensions: prevention and knowledge. Through
prevention DMOs try to understand how TCC develops in relation to their brands and then
prevent crises or take action to minimize damage or improve marketing. This dimension does
not need very advanced ICTsystems or interdisciplinary knowledge. The initiatives are applied
by using consultancy ?rms or webmasters to search and monitor how social network sites
portray the destination and report back to the DMOs’ departments. An example of this strategy
is GoSellTell’s monitoring of Twitter for DMOs, such as Travel Portland (Go Sell Tell, 2009).
The second dimension, knowledge, is seldom a feature. This aspect is highly demanding
and implies investments in ICT development and training, and a concerted innovation effort
from an organizational perspective. Nevertheless, this strategy allows DMOs to transform
massive and chaotic amounts of TCC into strategic knowledge. This transformation can be
achieved thanks to the possibilities of the advanced search engines and arti?cial
intelligence.
The analytic strategy has the opposite logic to that of the mimetic or advertising strategies.
This approach does not aim to fake social network sites on corporation sites or to enhance
traditional commercial campaigns with new tools. The analytic strategy is based on the
massive amount of TCC that is already available via the web and is extremely ?exible,
because this tactic follows the tourists to where they contribute. Furthermore, an analytic
perspective considers all the different stages of the tourism experience from corporation to
incorporation. Analytics use ICT to examine, select, classify, monitor and evaluate TCC.
The previous analysis showed how TCC could be considered to be a new type of global risk
for the management of destination branding. None of the strategies mentioned above can
totally manage this type of risk. However, the analytic strategy that is based on monitoring
and trend analysis is a valuable tool in forecasting and therefore may be more useful in risk
analysis.
An example of this strategy is the case of the project ‘‘Travel 2.0 promotion in Asia and
Paci?c’’ developed by the Scandinavian Tourism Board, Asia-Paci?c (STB). The project is
based on two main tools:
1. the search engine; and
2. the knowledge exchange database.
The search engine allows Asian tourists to examine, select and rank digital creative content
relating to Scandinavia. The knowledge exchange database stores, classi?es and structures
the content. This tool gives administrators and partners of the project access to historical
data, and enables users to examine tourismtrends and patterns over periods of time, as well
as statistical and graphical representations of TCC. It also allows DMOs’ sites to publish
selected content. The development of these tools demands a high level of interdisciplinary
skills. In this case, tourism researchers provide semantic classi?cations and segmentations;
STB managers monitor the functionality of the database and the coordination among four
different DMOs, and ICT researchers handle software and search speci?cations. Managers
in Asia translate these texts into local languages. All of these tasks develop through a
constant dialogue between the different disciplines and by combining practical and
theoretical knowledge. For example, the project allows tourism managers to monitor the
trends in Japanese or Korean tourists’ perceptions of a destination like Oslo, to identify
increases or decreases in interest in speci?c attractions or types of tourism (e.g. nature
tourism or spa-wellness tourism), to select TCC with positive stories about the destination as
part of their branding campaigns, or to examine negative TCC for quality management.
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Analytic strategy in relation to TCC means viewing tourist contributions on the Web as a pool
of knowledge. It has enormous potential as an active tool in helping DMOs to understand the
image formation of their destinations’ brands. However, this demands the enhancement of
skills and competences of those responsible for destination branding. Furthermore, a type of
destination branding tailored mainly by the wishes and desires of tourists, as expressed
through their TCC, is problematic. The danger is that the host community and other local
stakeholders may lose their in?uence on the destination brand. The local community is not an
active participant of TCC. The analytic strategy focuses on tourists’ wishes and behavior
and, thus, other mechanisms will have to ensure local communities’ participation in these
processes. Without compensating analytics with participation, the brand may become both
an international success and a local catastrophe.
Conclusion
The purpose of this study is to broaden knowledge of the relationship between TCC and
destination branding and to contribute to a better understanding of the strategies that DMOs
use in relation to TCC. This explorative study relies on qualitative research methods, content
analysis and ?eld research. It examines a sample of relevant social network sites, the
majority with a clear tourism focus. The ?ndings allow the classi?cation of formal elements of
the destination brand and image formation in relation to the different genres and types of
TCC. The analysis of the use of destination brands in TCC shows that tourists do not
incorporate the formal elements of the brands in their story-telling and experience sharing of
destinations. Elements such as taglines, slogans or logos are virtually non-existent as part of
TCC. However, tourists are extremely active in destination image formation through their
narrative, visual and audio contributions. These results point towards the embedding of user
contribution systems and TCCin Internet cultures with strong anti-commercial backgrounds,
such as the hacker culture or the open source movement (Castells, 2001).
The paper explains the different ways in which tourists may relate to destination branding
when producing and uploading TCC during their tourismexperience. The analysis based on
the tourism model (Jafari, 1987) shows that traditionally destination management
organizations have focused on the incorporation stage. However, at this stage tourists are
watchers rather than active contributors of TCC. During this ?rst stage, TCC developed by
other tourists can be expected to have the largest impact. The animation, repatriation and
incorporation components are those stages that show the highest activity of TCC in
destination image formation. TCCat the animation stage shows the lack of control that DMOs
have on the tourist destination product. Mobile and audiovisual technology, combined with
Web 2.0, turns TCC into a new type of global late-modern risk that is characterized by being
de-localized, incalculable and non-compensable. Furthermore, TCC shows how tourists are
active contributors to a new version of a surveillance society where the big brother is
thousands of web empowered tourism consumers.
The study presented three different strategies used by DMOs in relation to TCC and
destination branding. The three strategies are the mimetic, the advertising and the analytic.
The mimetic strategy is conservative and its main instrument is the introduction of Web 2.0
tools which allow for the inclusion of TCC in DMOs’ web sites. This strategy provides a fake
imitation of the logic of social network sites without changing the locus of control, which still
remains in the organization and not in the users. The organization does not bene?t from the
amount of TCC available on the web. The advertising strategy focuses on the corporation
component and enters social network sites by placing traditional ads or news. This type of
strategy only bene?ts from TCC as a platform for increased awareness.
Analytics is a very demanding strategic proposal based on the intensive use of IT. This
strategy has two dimensions, the ?rst focusing on monitoring and prevention and the second
focusing on knowledge. The latest allows DMOs to transform massive amounts of TCC into
strategic knowledge by using the possibilities of the web and arti?cial intelligence tools. The
analysis of the project ‘‘Travel 2.0 promotion in Asia and Paci?c’’ shows the strengths of this
strategy but also indicates some of the possible dangers such as lack of community
involvement.
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The paper demonstrates the schismbetween traditional destination branding and the image
formation enhanced by TCC. Tourists do not use the formal elements of the destination
brands. If TCC gains in intensity and impact capacity, user contributions may challenge the
capacity of destination branding to tailor and frame the image of the destination. This
exploratory study is a call for further research on a topic that is still highly unexplored. Further
analysis should focus on several main issues: the possible combinations of different
strategic agendas for the use of TCC in destination branding, the analysis of TCC and risk,
the impact of these developments on the involvement of local communities, and the
challenges of the analytic model for traditional DMO management.
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Corresponding author
Ana Mar? ´a Munar can be contacted at: [email protected]
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