eBusiness Weekly
Dr Musekiwa Clinton Tapera
It is generally accepted that the organisation can capture critical benefits by engaging meaningfully and effectively with their legitimate stakeholders, but other researchers prefer to think in terms of salience. Salience in this case refers to the degree of relevance of the interest of stakeholders to the organisation.
To show the difference, it is argued that a stakeholder group can be considered legitimate by an organisation especially when it concerns interests of the stakeholder as can affect or be affected by the organisation’s decision making. But that may not be salient enough in so far as such concerns are not of sufficient gravity or urgency that the organisation’s decision makers feel they need to attend to them. Therefore, careful selection is important. This requires a planner who has a complete a picture of all those people or groups who have a stake in the planning process and results of the nation branding project.
Strategies
Accommodation or inclusion known collectively as stakeholder management can be implemented in a variety of ways.
There is need for continuous relationship with stakeholders for familiarity and information sharing and co-operation. Stakeholders can be assigned more formal roles by integrating them into the organisation’s decision making.
Some organisations might chose to consult them from time to time in order to gain an improved understanding of their interests.
Stakeholder involvement in nation branding is central to the establishment of an appealing, compelling, satisfying nation brand that is believable, authentic and satisfying. In this case successful destination branding and brand management depend on the vital role of public and private sector stakeholders. It is critical to the creation of a durable and sustainable distinctive brand to identify the brand values, the translation of these into a suitably emotionally appealing personality and the targeted and efficient delivery of that message. It is therefore important to identify stakeholders crucial to the delivery of the destination brand and the examination of the positioning process.
The importance of collaboration is critical for destination branding. Collaborative destination marketing stakeholders will be involved in four stages.
First, pre-conditions for marketing: they have to adapt their products and services to suit their environments including relevant physical product, social factors and technological issues. Destination management stakeholders will match certain types of demand and develop appropriate tourism products, brand destinations and accessibility for the potential target markets.
Secondly they motivate stakeholders to enter into such strategy to achieve their specific goals. For example, the CAMPFIRE programme in Zimbabwe for addressing human-animal conflict, environmental conservation and community benefit from wildlife.
Another example, is the existence of Community Trust Groups in some parts of Africa which aim to support cultural heritage, education and protecting environmental resources of a region, hence they work closely with community groups and organisations to get help and support them to achieve their goals successfully. Thirdly, the dynamics of the collaborative marketing process and lastly the outcome construct which describes the consequences of the collaborative marketing activities.
In tourism for example, a stakeholder is responsible for building a once in a lifetime experience for tourists, which will be one of the goals for tourists when they travel to a destination. In terms of creating experience, It can refer to a holistic experience that stakeholders must provide, the right and relevant experience for the tourist target market and excellent tourism product, service quality and tourism infrastructure.
In contrast, poor roads, inconvenient transportation and bad hotel services can degrade tourism experience.
In today’s tourism destination development, the ability to collaborate with stakeholders helps to create an awareness of destination marketing that provides competitive advantages. Consequently, the ability of the Destination Management Organisation to interact effectively with stakeholders in the destination is important to its success.
Nation branding in general and tourism destination branding in particular, face popular branding challenges because of the many stakeholders involved. A destination clearly differs from products in that it is not a single product but comprise a bundle of different components encompassing accommodation, hospitality, attractions, the arts, entertainment, culture, heritage and natural environments. Destination marketers have little control over these different sectors yet this diverse range of agencies and companies are all stakeholders in the destination brand. They include local and national government and their agencies, environmental and trade associations, civic groups and the wider private sector and SMEs.
Public sector/Private sector divergent approaches
Public sector destination marketers such as the Zimbabwe Tourism Authority (ZTA) are adversely hampered by a variety of political pressures, which are common in any country. They are found reconciling local and regional interests and promote a destination identity acceptable to a range of public and private sector constituencies.
Destination marketers in this case have to confront and deal with culture clash between the public and private sector travel and tourism sectors whose value systems are highly divergent. Martin Sandback Head of Research at the British Tourism Authority at the World Tourism Conference. Contended that the private sector or commercial sector had a short term view of the world and national Tourism
Organisations are instructed by government to have a medium to long term perspective and 95 percent of their budget is in tactical or short term marketing. He concludes by stating that there were no partners with whom it is easy to create strategic partnerships.
This is a reflection that successful destination branding in thus about achieving a balance between applying cutting-edge advertising and public relations approaches to a marketing problem and a “realpolitik” of managing local, regional and national interests. The approach used by the ministry of information, Publicity and Broadcasting services seems to get round this culture clash simply by observing the form and content of the delegates invited at the launch of the nation branding initiative. It was indeed broad and wide to include all the key players in the national social-economic spectrum.
Dr Musekiwa Clinton Tapera writes in his personal capacity. He has a PhD in Marketing. His research work and thesis focuses on the destination branding of Zimbabwe.
Dr Tapera’s areas of interest include general destination marketing of cities and towns, tourism destinations, corporate reputation and communications and projects and public relations and investment projects and public relations and investment attraction programmes. He can be contacted on email: [email protected] mobile 0772 920 617.
