Repositioning destinations: Mission impossible?
January 08, 2015
MU’s Prof. Andreas Zins recently won accolades at the 5th Destination Branding and Marketing Conference in Macau, the biannual forum for ‘practitioners and thinkers of destination branding and marketing’. He claimed one of the four best paper prizes for his recent study on the intended and projected images of 365 Chinese districts with the help of former master student Shasha Lin, who conducted the empirical field work.
In a turn away from more traditional academic conference awards, a sponsored prize by famed bungy-jumping outfit AJ Hackett sent the winners to the platform of the Macau Tower. Prof. Zins braved the ‘world’s only urban tower climb’ and reached the apex at 338 m with a splendid view over Macau. One of his co-winners, Prof. Per Olof Berg of the Stockholm Business School, dared to risk his first bungy jump from this tower platform – at over 65 years of age!
Excellent keynote speakers contributed to the focused debate on destination branding and marketing, including Steven Pike of the Queensland University of Technology who explained trends in destination image research over the past 40 years, and Robert Govers, independent advisor for national, regional and city government administrations, who compared the Nation Brand Index with a new instrument called the Good Country Index expressing the value and contribution of destinations to other countries.
Malcolm Allan from Placematters Ltd. gave vital insights into an ongoing consulting project for developing a new brand for the city of Cork, Ireland, and the director of the Macau Tourism Board addressed the challenges Macau is currently facing with stagnating turnovers from gambling and with addressing new target segments for city tourism.
Overall the conference was a great success – congratulations to Prof. Zins on his paper win!