Destination branding - something beyond tourism

The word Destination Branding explains itself but does it refer to particular city, a place, a state, or a country as a whole?

Let us start by answering this question, the word destination branding means a process used to develop a unique identity and personality that is different from all competitive destinations.

Destination branding is “selecting a consistent brand element mix to identify and distinguish a destination through positive image building”

The example for it could be when we go for selecting our holiday destination we never select places like Pakistan, Afghanistan etc it is so because all these places have celebrity value that is people know about these places but there is no emotional pull attach to it so it is famous for some bad reason, but places like India they have both Emotional pull and Celebrity value too. So it is becoming a tourist hub now days. But there are many places that have that emotional pull but no celebrity value if all such country promotes itself well they can be a good place to bank on, because these places have potential but it is un explored.

So for country like India the concepts of Destination Branding are very important because if they want to sell country India as a product they should promote India well too. So Destination branding is not a small term it consists of the whole country and it is a combination of various states promoting itself.

Now if look at the economical point of view it would create a lot of employment generation opportunity. And also by doing so it will generate a lot of foreign currency and thus income from which the economy will be benefited. For this India has done a lot of work in the last 5to 8 years the Incredible India Campaign that was launched and it’s still running successfully. So all this activity adds value to our country and people get attracted towards our country.

Now if we look at the scope of Destination Branding a simple question comes to our mind that is destination branding only confined to the tourism?

Let us answer this with an example take Finland why Finland is famous is it a tourist place like India No is it famous for some wrong deed the answer is again no then for what? It’s for the company Nokia is originated their only. So this example states that tourism can be part of destination branding but it is not the only thing but yes it can be the key or the major player under it.

In country like India if we look states wise only few states will be famous for tourism thing, states or places like Gujarat is famous for AMUL company, Bangalore is for IT sector, Chennai is for automobile sector , Mumbai is for Bollywood, Jamshedpur is for Tata Steel and many others.

So all the above examples tell that the Scope of Destination Branding is very vast and it would be wrong to say that Destination Branding is equal to tourism.

So for Country like India it’s high time to understand these basic thing and work for it and we have to work as a team as a country as a whole so that we can make our country India a much better Destination for the tourist that are coming here and also unique from other competitors too. And in country like India which is famous for its rich diversified culture, the only thing that we have to do is to well organize the things that we have and maintain them well.