Tourism Destination Brand Equity Dimensions : Renewal Versus Repeat Market

This paper investigates the concept of customer-based brand equity for a tourism destination, which has been introduced to tourism literature only few years ago. Specifically, it investigates, whether the differences between the renewal and repeat tourists exist in their evaluation of tourism destination. A theoretically proposed model, encompassing the dimension of awareness, image, quality and loyalty, was empirically verified for the European tourism destination Slovenia from the perspective of the German tourists. They were classified as either renewal or repeat visitors. The results imply that dimension of image and quality plays the most important role in tourists' evaluation of a destination, regardless of the fact, whether they are first time visitors, or repeaters. On the contrary, differences in awareness and loyalty dimension exist between renewal and repeat tourists. Drawing on the results, the paper also offers some implications for tourism organizations in developing and implementing destination marketing strategies in foreign markets