Guest blog: Dr John Heely

Här kommer en gästblogg från Dr John Heely, som jag fick förmånen att träffa på ECMs möte i februari, där han höll ett föredrag.
John has a long experience from developing destinations, both from practice and theory, he is specialised in City Marketing. His theme on the ECM conference was Best practice across the public and private sectors. Right now he is writing a book, which will be published this summer. I really enjoyed talking to John during the days and I look forward to read his book!

"For the past 6 months I have been writing a book called Inside City Marketing: a European perspective. I have 2 chapters to go and the publisher has set me Easter as the deadline for her receipt of the completed manuscript. Elisabeth Ennefors has provided me some information on her organisation, so Visit Lulea gets a mention in the book - as does Uppsala Tourism, Malmo Tourism, Gothenburg & Co, and the Stockholm Visitors Board.
One of the themes in the book is how much city tourism organisation varies from place to place, unlike say in America where visitor and convention bureaux are pretty much a standardised product from city to city. They even call themselves more or less the same thing!
Not so in Europe! City tourism organisation varies markedly from place to place, reflecting local conditions, needs and peculiarities. To start with, the five Swedish organisations mentioned in the book all have a different style of name. Why does Stockholm go for Visitors Board and not Stockholm and Co? Why not Lulea Tourism? More fundamentally, city tourism organisations differ in terms of status, finances, and responsibilities. Why, for instance, is Malmo Tourism a department of the local authority, contrasting with the other four organisations which have all adopted some form or other of public: private partnership- though even here the degree of municipal control and influence is a variable.
In my book I have developed what a typology in which seven forms of city tourism organisation are identified:
- City leisure tourism bureau(CLTB) e.g. Ghent Tourist Board
- City convention bureau(CCB) e.g. Congress Ghent
- City tourist board(CTB) e.g. Amsterdam Convention and Tourist Board
- City branding authority(CBA) e.g. Amsterdam Partners
- City inward investment agency(CIIA) e.g. Amsterdam in Business
- City marketing agency(CMA) e.g. Glasgow Marketing Bureau, Brussels International, Destination Edinburgh Marketing Alliance
- City marketing and inward investment agency(CMIA) e.g. Explore Northamptonshire
It is interesting that Uppsala and Lulea the CTB is migrating towards becoming a city marketing agency. There has been a definite trend in that direction in Britain. Also interestingly, of the four city marketing agencies I set up for Sheffield, Coventry, Birmingham, and Nottingham, only the Coventry one – CVI – remained a city marketing agency once I left. The other 3 organisations migrated from city marketing agencies to become city tourist boards, keeping their responsibilities for business and leisure tourism, but losing their role in respect of city image and branding.
I will be watching to see how things pan out in Uppsala and Lulea!"

Mer om detta kan ni läsa på: http://www.bestdestinationmarketing.com/