Abstract

Destination brands have attracted the interest of scholars since 1990s, but researchers have mainly focused their attention on the demand-side of these brands, i.e. on the visitors’ perceived brand image. Only recently a growing number of researchers started focusing on the supply-side of destination brands in order to understand the role of stakeholders in their development. Nonetheless, a concept that was developed by scholars in the area of product and service brands such as the Internal Brand Strength, has received little attention in the literature on destination branding. In order to fill this gap a qualitative research was carried out by investigating four former industrial cities in the UK. Twelve semi-structured interviews with destination stakeholders working in different sectors (such as hospitality, retail, destination management, etc.) were carried out. Interviews were coded in order to understand how the Internal Brand Strength could be applied to city brands and to develop a theoretical model. Although this research was carried out through a limited number of interviews, it represents the first stage in the development of a theoretical framework on Internal Destination Brand Strength. However, due to the exploratory nature of this research further studies aimed at testing the framework will be necessary.