Positioning ASEAN as One Collective Destination: Towards a Sustainable Brand

Abstract

In a globalizing world, where traveling is becoming easy and accessible, tourism destinations are increasingly competing in drawing travelers into their areas. One of the biggest challenges for any destination marketers is the substitutability of their offerings and the task of positioning their destinations against the numerous competing places that offer similar features (Moilanen & Rainisto, 2009; Pike, 2012; Pike & Page, 2014). The intense competitiveness of the global tourism industry increasingly calls for the most competitive positioning for individual destinations (Miller & Henthorne, 2007; Pike 2012). Consequently, the paper attempts to investigate the positioning strategies of the 10 individual destinations of ASEAN to better understand their distinctiveness and assess ASEAN collective brand. The current research aims to fill this gap through a preliminary assessment of brand elements of ten countries in ASEAN on how they project their official tourism websites using the method of content analysis of the 10 official tourism websites. This is followed by a discussion of the desired ASEAN collective brand with the engagement of ASEAN stakeholder in tourism collaboration, focusing mainly on joint promotion of tourism destinations. Consequently, the study presents an integrative framework embracing collaborative stakeholder efforts that ultimately leads to achieve a unified and sustainable brand of ASEAN. Keywords: Collective ASEAN Brand; Positioning; Destination Branding; Sustainable Brand; Stakeholder