How to build a tourism destination brand

Building a tourism destination doesn't happen overnight. If look to the successful examples for Failte Ireland and The Wild Atlantic Way which has taken 20 years to become fully established. A brilliant example of a destination and a route it was developed to promote tourism along Ireland’s west coast, stretching over 2,500 km from the Inishowen Peninsula in County Donegal to Kinsale in County Cork. It was designed to highlight the stunning landscapes, culture, and heritage of Ireland's Atlantic coastline and caught fire in the public imagination and worked.

So how do you build your own destination band?

From my experience it does take years but there are a few well established steps involved and I am going to share the VisitBlackrock destination brand that I helped create in Louth.

Committee - The very first step will be for like minded people to form a committee. Our committee was small just four people. But all of whom were very diverse and all do-ers. Committees often have too many people involved who talk too much and do too little. My advice is to keep it small - 4 to 6 people will work best.

Strategy - Every successful business, team or organisation must have a strategy. So many companies dont and follow the same processes blindly expecting better outcomes. For Blackrock we worked on a basic strategic document that used a SOSTAC model even though at the time we wrote it we didnt know what that was.

Situation - Where are we, what is the plan, who do we want to be, what will we be called etc

Objectives - Mission Statement, Increase Football, Bednights, Spend etc

Strategy - Vision, Promotion, Development, Unification, Momentum

Tactics - Website, Social, Branding, Events, Map etc

Actions - Meetings, Events, Funding, Networking etc

Controls - Minutes, Accounts, Reviews etc

Branding - A cornerstone of what we needed to promote the village was a new recognisable brand. We worked with a local Graphic Design (Grandson.ie) to create a complete new brand.

We then proceed to brand all of our materials, website, social and printed flyers, maps, flags etc all with the new brand and colour scheme. We wanted to make it memorable and easy to associate with our village when promoting tourism.

Vision - We then launched the strategy (5 years ago) to an invited audience in a local restaurant. A real town hall type of meeting where we invited business owners, tidy towns, politicians etc to share this new visions for the village. I think this is one of the most important steps on a journey that organisation often miss. How can you expect others to share your vision if you haven't got up in a room full of people and explained it to their faces.

Membership - Once we did that buy in from local businesses was easy as they "got it". We needed to fundraise for events and promotion so we setup a paid membership for a website and map listing.

A tourism map is a complex but invaluable tourism promotion assets. Even in the age of digital visitors still want something to take away in their hand as souvenir and often its just a free map. Something they can read later or throw in the suitcase or show friends when they get back home. Something that proves they were the there even - if they didnt buy the t-shirt.

Events - As part of our strategy we undertook some really big and mostly free family friendly outdoor events in the village. Something that parents want to bring their kids to that wont cost a fortune as part of a day visit to the area. So we organised the St Patricks Day Parade, Halloween Festivals and we ran the Blackrock Film Festival for 5 years attracting thousands of people to open air movies on the beach. These were hugely successful but took months of planning and eventually be came cost and time prohibitive so my advice here would be to expand the committee for events as funding, paperwork and coordination will take 20 plus people even for a small event.

Co-Operation - Blackrock Village luckily has a tremendous community spirit. The Blackrock Tidy Town group is one of the best in the country and was in existence working on the upkeep and development of the village long before we ever formed. They won Irelands Tidiest Town in 2024 and having an active well organised group is a huge asset to the destination. The village also has a very active Blackrock Social Group and a number of sporting groups who organise events on the beach and on the water. All of these groups work in tandem to respect and cooperate with each other to promote the village as a great place to live and visit.

Downsizing - COVID gave us the pause we were looking from a committee point of view. As the World came to a stop so did our event activities and when we all resumed our committee decided to pull back from events and thankfully another local group has taken over the reigns brilliantly.

Future - We now focus on general promotion of the village from a marketing point of view rather than specifically promoting any one business. It works better to promote sunny days, beautiful walks, sea swims and coffee breaks to visitor as it give a sense of the destination. Longer term we are working on a project to restore the Dudley Blake lifeboat as an attraction to be on display in the village at a point yet to be decided.

Finally - Destination development takes a strategy, goals, plan, brand and people to make it happen. It needs buy in from others plus fundraising and sponsorship from local businesses. It should part of greater brand prospects like VisitLouth, SeaLouth, BoyneValley and Irelands Ancient East to maximise the exposure with support from Failte Ireland. Destinations should developed and not left to find their own way as they often fall foul of under or overdevelopment.

Ultimately, a destination should be as enjoyable to live in as it is to visit as we are all looking for better more beautiful place to be in like sunny Blackrock...

www.visitblackrock.ie

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