Progress and trends in destination branding and marketing – a brief and broad review

Purpose – This paper aims to review the dramatic growth in the number of meetings and published materials exploring destination branding and marketing over the past 15 years. It points out several notable thematic sub-branching in the field and prospective directions based on observable changes in the content and structure of this now-established discipline. Design/methodology/approach – The review draws broad patterns and trends from the SCOPUS database and from Google’s Ngram metadata as well as a structural analysis of subject keywords. Findings – Destination branding appears to be now as, if not more, relevant than general tourism or destination marketing. It is not just growing as a field of study but devolving, on the one hand, into several sub-branches but, on the other hand, also expanding more holistically to incorporate higher-level concepts of social identity, community and sustainability. Originality/value – The paper provides a broad overview of thematic development and changes in the content and structure of destination branding and marketing at the metadata level.