Country Branding From A Global Cultural Tourism Perspective: Part Six
A comparison between different countries based on FutureBrand Country Branding Index (CBI) and the Anholt-GfK Roper Nation Brands Index (NBI)
Country branding is a very powerful tool for developing sustainable flow of cultural tourism to any destination. Here are my overall conclusions on country branding for the global cultural tourism based on the comparison between FutureBrand Country Brand Index and Anholt GfK Roper Nation Brands Index.
The Bottom Line
Global cultural tourism relies on overall country branding and well-targeted destination branding focused on cultural heritage
When it comes to global cultural tourism, the overall country branding is helping more than country tourism branding based on cultural heritage. The reason is that very few countries are focusing their entire efforts to base their branding on the success of their culture, the richness of their cultural heritage and their vibrant creative industries. The ones that are doing it the right way, are ripping huge awards – they become among the top 10 countries in both Country Brand Index and Nation Brand Index (see table above).In this comparison, FutureBrand CBI has more value for practitioners, since from the table is obvious that even the position of the countries best branded for cultural tourism coincides to their overall country branding.
From country branding to destination branding for cultural tourism
The perception, awareness and relevance of a country brand definitely helps cultural tourism. But from this fact to converting a country with strong destination branding for cultural tourism there are several issues that have to be solved – by both of branding strategists and cultural tourism stakeholders. One of them is how to focus on brand assets for cultural and creative tourism.
Since Richard Florida wrote his book on creative class, many practitioners are trying to use the creative industries of cities to boost cultural tourism. The table below illustrates the high dependence of creative industries for overall country branding – a dimensions, which I am sure will be added in some of the upcoming reports of FutureBrand, since they are much more flexible in terms of improving their Indexes on yearly basis. Six out of the 10 top 10 brands in CBI and 7 out of the top 10 of NBI are among the top 10 in creative industries exports worldwide – a serious country brand driver and indispensable ingredient in the next state of the cultural tourism – the creative tourism.
This is also another proof that CBI is more useful for practitioners in the cultural and creative tourism, when it comes to create strategies for destination development based on its creative industry influence on branding.
Which one of the two indexes is better?
Comparison between the value of Country Brand Index and Nation Brands Index for tourism strategy makers, destination managers and travel practitioners
Audience
Both of Country Brand Index and Nation Brand Index are extremely important for cultural tourism strategy makers, cultural tourism policy advisors and consultants. For destination management organizations, CVBs, tour operators and other travel practitioners, CBI is the most useful one, since it covers more dimensions of cultural tourism brand dimensions and more countries. In spite that Anhold GfK Roper NBI covers 50 countries, it has more Eurocentric approach, versus CBI which has more US/global focus.
Theoretical vs. Practical Approach
While Simon Anhold is a theorist and lecturer on country branding and Gfk Roper are research firm, FutureBrands are one of the top 10 practitioners in the world with significant hands-on experience on the subject. That reflects on their approach in survey methodology, observed number of countries and final country rating for tourism. While Anhold GfK Nation Brands Index is very useful for research and policy makers at the highest level of country branding stakeholders, specially for the European countries, Country Brand Index is much more functional for practical decisions when it comes to different tourism segments and worldwide country branding tangible solutions.
Anomalies
From the global cultural tourism perspective, country brand trends in CBI are very well analyzed and extremely useful, although the research is lacking large survey base that leads to some anomalies such as Spain, Russia and Mexico are not perceived as top cultural tourism destinations.
The anomaly in Anhold GfK Roper Nation Brands Index is that they include in cultural branding sports, which poses real difficulties for cultural tourism strategy makers and practitioners to take appropriate decision, since sports tourism has totally different characteristics from cultural tourism.
Actionable dimensions
When it comes to actionable dimensions in country branding from a global cultural tourism perspective, FutureBrand leads the competition. Many of the aspects of CBI analysis directly help decision makers with relevant information: the importance of using country icons in country branding, the ease of travel and safety analysis and many of the dimensions for cultural tourism. Nightlife, fine dining, shopping and the usage of social media analysis are very useful for acting on tour design, cultural programs for cities and overall destination developing plans. Which leads to better overall cultural tourism product offering and higher income for the destination.
Brand weaknesses analysis in CBI and cultural tourism
One of the most important actionable brand dimensions for global cultural tourism belongs to FutureBrand Country Brand Index. In their analysis, the New York based company points out the weaknesses for the top 10 countries in their ranking and beyond. The USA, for example, suffers from its 49th place for arts and culture (undeserved, of course), which doesn’t permit it to enter in the top 10 countries for cultural tourism (composite between history and art & culture country brand dimensions). By knowing what are the weaknesses in branding, each country can concentrate its efforts to improve them. That will help much more the cultural tourism for certain countries – Spain, the USA, and others, once appropriate policies are put in place and DMOs, CVBs and tour operators promote the aspects of the right aspects of a destination.
More case studies in CBI
For example, France, UK, and Spain suffer a lot from the perception of being “synthetic countries”. Promoting their rural beauty and highly preserved cultural heritage will help them to rank better in all dimensions of cultural tourism and push their overall branding.
Greece, on the contrary, which finally got it with its branding based on history, made it to the top 20 in overall country branding, and among the top 10 in tourism dimensions. The country holds one of the top 10 position in only 3 out of the total of 19 tourism categories, but scores very high in history and art & culture, which also makes it very desirable place for history buffs and admirers of classical archaeology.
Technology, Internet and New Media
FutureBrand pays very close attention to trends in social media, mobile technologies and Internet overall role in country brand building through technology interaction. That is due to the fact that several experts in the country branding field were used for share their trend predictions and point out different aspects of new tendencies. NBI relies only on the otherwise genius in nation branding Simon Anhold, and it reflects on the technology approach. Social media, Internet usage for travel information and booking, and other technologies are not a dimensions or mentioned as trends in the NBI.
On the other side, on the website of Simon Anhold there is a cute gadget for the general public to understand what the people of a country are thinking regarding the 6 brand dimenstion of the NBI in other country or their own country. Totally useless for serious research, since it would be very time confusing to chose all possible dimensions for each possible country, record the results and draw a conclusion. Even only for tourism and culture, that would be a 500 possible combination exercise, and unless you don’t have anything else to do, it is an insanity to rely on the gadget for practical decision making.
Price and versatility
The full Future Brand Country Brand Index costs only $250, versus $ 47,000 (!!!) for the Anholt GfK Roper Nation Brands Index. FutureBrand also offers a lot of flexibility to order brand reports for a specific country or for a group of countries, as well as country brand reports on specific topics. Anholt GfK Roper Nation Brands Index and in reality this way the Index even becomes more expensive, since the buyer has to extract the country or topic data and analyze it at his/her own cost.
The verdict
As a conclusion, National Brands Index is more useful for research institutions with large budgets and the highest level of policy makers in rich governments. Country Brand Index is targeted to practitioners and has much move value for cultural tourism hands-on strategy advisors, consultants, DMOs, CVBs and tour operator managers and much more accessible for small and medium enterprises, not so affluent countries and individual tourism strategy consultants.
