Does City Brand Equity Have any Impacts in Tourism World? A Case Study of Bandung City - Indonesia as a Tourism Destination

Abstract

In today’s world of tourism when people can go travelling easily because of many low cost carriers, city branding becomes a crucial point to be considered in the need of elevating city’s position among the other competitors as it can attract more tourists. Bandung is the capital city of West Java – Indonesia, which tourism has become very phenomenal as it has been increasing time to time (bandung.go.id). Bandung city is true to have so many potentials such as in culinary, fashion, beautiful mountains, heritage buildings, etc – which are very good, since anything special in a city might attract tourists (Hospers, cited in Dinnie, 2011). But then, it’s been a huge question if there is any urgency to brand Bandung and differentiate it from others in the purpose of gaining competitive brand value – as the theory of place branding (Ashworth, 2009; cited in Dinnie, 2011) which is more complex than branding products and services (Freire, 2005; cited in Dinnie 2011). Yet, it is a difficult task to do since images associated with a city are intangible and abstract (Dinnie, 2011). Additionally, even though cities have several different target audiences, the core brand stance must be consistent – One city, one brand (Dinnie, 2011). So that this research will measure CBBETD of Bandung city as tourism destination from the tourists’ perspective and whether the results have any significant impacts toward Bandung tourism and also toward future development of Bandung city branding.