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Tourism destination brands and electronic commerce: Towards synergy?

School of Marketing and Tourism, Faculty of Business, Edith Cowan University, Joondalup, Australia, paul.williams{at}cowan.edu.au

A. J. Palmer

Universiy of Ulster, Magee College, Londonderry

This paper discusses the impact of electronic commerce on the development of strong tourism destination brands. Electronic media have the potential to create strong direct links between individual tourism suppliers and their customers, thereby possibly undermining collective efforts to create strong destination brands. In addition, electronic media may have the potential to strengthen the process of destination brand creation, by facilitating interaction and cross-selling between complementary producers within a destination. A case study methodology is used to evaluate the recently developed Brand Western Australia (Brand WA) marketing campaign. This strategy attempted to develop a strong centralised tourism destination brand for the state of Western Australia and the paper reviews the branding strategy to date, the promotional and distribution channels used, and the challenges and opportunities faced by WA suppliers when using electronic channels on the Internet. It is concluded that despite the enormous growth in the use of electronic commerce, it is not being used to its full potential. Suppliers appear to be using the Internet in a random, disorganised, uncooperative way.

Key Words: Internet • electronic commerce • destination marketing • branding

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