The brand image of the six islands of the Dutch Caribbean are examined in this exploratory study to determine the extent to which these destinations communicate the unique identities of their destination brands as presented by the narrative, images, logos, and slogans on their official tourism homepage websites. The findings of the content analysis indicated that these destinations demonstrated similar branding strategies and so appear to be basically undifferentiated in both functional and symbolic brand image appeals. This article proposes that these island destinations may be able to build strong, individual, destination brand equity by focusing more on crafting and communicating distinctive, symbolic brand images.

No abstract

This exploratory study examines the attitudes of tourism, civic and business stakeholders in Kazakhstan to China's proposed Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). It aims to determine the applicability of Social Exchange Theory (SET) in measuring local attitudes towards the likely impacts of the multi-sectoral, transboundary mega projects of the BRI on tourism development in the destination. In addressing this gap in research on attitudes to tourism development in this wider regional context, the study confirms the utility of SET as an explanatory framework in benchmarking stakeholders' attitudes towards the implications of the BRI for tourism development. The findings suggest that while there is a strong support for the economic value of China's BRI for the sector, there are some concerns that it may undermine local autonomy and Kazakhstan's distinctive brand as a tourist destination.

The evaluation of social enterprise projects has focused mainly on devising effective performance measurement methods and processes to justify the investment of resources and time committed to such activities. With increasing demands for accountability, effectiveness, evidence of return on investment and value-added results, evaluation activities have been driven by imperatives of objectivity in assessments and the development of tools that monetize the social outcomes and impacts of social enterprise projects. These traditional approaches to evaluation have also been widely adapted in tourism based social enterprises that seek to attain goals of poverty alleviation, empowerment of local communities, and improved livelihoods for those marginalized from mainstream tourism economic activities. This chapter argues that traditional approaches to evaluation may be limited in supporting social entrepreneurship projects with development objectives of empowerment and societal change. It is proposed that social enterprise projects involving community participation may be better positioned to achieve their developmental objectives by incorporating more of the principles of Participatory Evaluation (PE) and Empowerment Evaluation (EE) in the quest to harness the economic prowess of tourism for human development.

No abstract