Storytelling in the context of destination marketing: an analysis of conceptualisations and impact measurement

Storytelling has become an integral part of communication strategies in the tourism industry in order to promote and differentiate destination brands online. Despite increasing investments in destination branding since the 1990s, few studies have focused on the conceptual and strategic premises behind destination storytelling campaigns, and how marketers measure the success of storytelling. Drawing from the branding literature, this paper seeks to analyse the conceptualisations of storytelling in destination branding practice and explores how marketers approach the measurement of its impacts. For this purpose, 25 semi-structured interviews with storytelling practitioners have been analysed with thematic analysis. The findings suggest that storytelling in the context of destination marketing seeks to convey a message about the destination's identity and attributes involving a cognitive, affective and conative dimension. There is consent that storytelling should be based on various communication channels and involve all destination brand stakeholders in the co-creation process of place associations in order to sustain tourist satisfaction and destination loyalty. Furthermore, destination branding practitioners argue that storytelling has an indirect long-term impact on returns, and that quantitative and qualitative variables need to be used to evaluate the effects of storytelling. The paper concludes with managerial implications and further research directions.