DESTINATION BRANDING PANTAI BLIMBINGSARI SEBAGAI SENTRA KULINER IKAN BAKAR DI KABUPATEN BANYUWANGI

Abstract

Blimbingsari beach is one of a kind of Banyuwangi’s beach that have a high potential on grilled fish special culinary aspect This beach became the pioneer of Banyuwangi’s very first seafood and grilled fish restaurant with ‘lesehan’ type, and that was the brand was formed ever since. Thus also makes the image of Blimbingsari skyrocket and built perspective of tourists for years and the paradigm brings many people to come and try the dish by themselves. However,  Blimbingsari beach has not optimalize the brand identity they have and has no tagline or destination icon to increase the branding yet. The main purpose of this research is to formulate of priority strategies of Blimbingsari destination branding as a grilled fish culinary center which lies in Banyuwangi.This research is using qualitative descriptive with SWOT  analysis and  AHP for making desicion in a path of top priority strategies. And the result itself, shows that the culinary potential has been being built by brand and long-journey tourist perspective, the taste of the grilled fish itself, best price dishes and comfortable ambiance. The highest strenght factor owned Blimbingsari beach is having a strategic location, the main weakness factor is inadequate food utensils. The major opportunity of factor is the sinergy between to communities to increase regional profit and the main threat factor is the emergence of new competitors. In addition, this research also produced five priority strategies.