Brand equity in a tourism destination

Brand equity is a well-known concept within the marketing sciences. It refers to a product's value from the return generated from a firm's marketing strategy. The concept is not easy to apply to a destination as the destination 'firm' is a mix of various stakeholders including residents who offer their space to tourists without remuneration. In this article, the history of destination image studies is traced to its eventual evolution into destination branding. The concept of destination brand equity is then discussed as more than a simple return to a destination's marketing strategy. The case is made that destination brand equity is integrally tied to sustainability. The article offers a model and corresponding equations to measure destination sustainability arguing that brand equity measurement is one and the same process. Owing to the unique characteristics of a destination the two concepts converge. © 2014 Macmillan Publishers Ltd.