DestinationManagement Organization’s Emotional Branding Communication: Challenges and Opportunities in Social Media

Abstract

This chapter discusses the challenges and opportunities destinations have when transforming their communication and marketing strategies in the social media world. Building on the principles of experience design for destinations, the chapter synergizes destination strategies with the principles of the emotional branding paradigm. Therefore, the chapter first elaborates on the theory of brand personality and its use for communicating destination brands on popular social media platforms. Furthermore, the chapter also elaborates on the concept of user engagement in order to understand how destination brands can optimize online engagement with their audience. The combination of the aforementioned concepts leads to a better understanding of strategic opportunities for e-destination management. Through the presentation of common social media marketing practices among European Destination Management Organizations (DMOs), various critical lessons learned are provided. More specifically, DMOs’ Facebook and Twitter engagement are illustrated by analyzing their actual emotional brand communication strategies, user engagement metrics, and their overall activity. In doing so, an overall assessment is provided that includes a set of successful strategies as well as failing strategies that are important for DMOs to consider when opting to stay competitive.