ABSTRACT
Destination marketers face a number of challenges in the efforts to brand a region, owing to a far more intricate context than the one corporate brand managers operate in. They must balance stakeholder interests in a fragmented destination network and bridge the gap between the bureaucratic cultures of public actors and the marketing cultures of private firms. Furthermore, they must undertake a regional coordinating and representative role in spite of limited ownership, budget or power to control how individual firms deliver. Last, but not least, they must be alert to consumer trends and look for innovative ways of involving new groups of customers in order to develop the destination. This implies that destination branding is a long-term, dialogue-based process (Schultz, Antorini & Csaba, 2006), where the brand essence, values and personality of a place develops and arises through interaction with an extended group of stakeholders. Destination marketers may act as facilitators, enablers or mediators in this process, and sometimes, the process may partly (or entirely) bypass them. This case study explores the organic repositioning of Voss, a Norwegian inland destination, and thus captures a destination branding process sidestepping the local tourism organisation. Region Voss is mostly characterised by a strong orientation towards active young consumers, using contemporary popular cultural narratives to enhance tourist consumption. Although the Voss Municipality Tourism Office promotes a traditional rural imagery, a number of actors outside the DMO (local retailers, sports clubs, entrepreneurs) interact in an innovative way to create a more youthful and sportive identity – through a dynamic dialogue with tourists. The goal of this chapter is to describe this dialogue by identifying key elements in this mutual identity building process.
