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Tourism & Management Studies
Print version ISSN 2182-8458On-line version ISSN 2182-8466
Abstract
DIAS, Francisco and CARDOSO, Lucília. How can brand equity for tourism destinations be used to preview tourists' destination choice? An overview from the top of Tower of Babel. TMStudies [online]. 2017, vol.13, n.2, pp.13-23. ISSN 2182-8458.
Customer-based brand equity for tourism destinations (CBBE-TD) is a helpful construct to assess destination branding effectiveness. However, it would be even more useful if it could be integrated into a wider methodological approach articulating destination brand assessment with the destination choice process. This paper describes a new research programme - Favourite Destinations Worldwide - that includes three interrelated innovative tools: (1) the destination brand choice model that allows a better conceptualization of CBBE-TD in the context of destination choice; (2) the Tower of Babel platform, a multilingual online survey for data gathering, to assess CBBE-TD of all destinations competing in the world market; and (3) the Destination Brand Gnosis, a propriety software for qualitative data analysis, transforming the meta-data into a system for constantly evaluating brand attractiveness. Additionally, for illustrative purposes empirical data from two national samples is presented: Portuguese (N = 524) and Brazilian (N = 955). Besides presenting the preferred destination brands for Brazilian and Portuguese tourists, the results confirm a basic assumption supporting this research program related to the geographic polarization of the most valued destination brands: “dream destination brands” correspond to destinations located farther from respondents' home-places, in other continents, requiring long-haul air travel, while “favourite destination brands” are predominantly destinations located nearer, in respondents' own countries or neighbouring countries
Keywords : Brand equity; destination choice; dream destination; favourite destination.