Brand equity of Mashhad tourism destination

Nowadays, tourism industry is an excellent opportunity for governments to increase their earnings. Accordingly, there has to be a competition between cities to attract more tourists. City branding creates a branding destination for tourists that can be defined as a way to develop a unique identity through establishing different destinations from that of its competitors. Developing countries, such as Iran, with its ancient and valuable buildings, rich culture, pilgrimage destinations, natural attractions and etc. are considered as potential tourist destinations, which can offer a valuable products along with the global competitions if there is proper conservation and utilization with careful temporal and locational conditions.It is necessary to define a unique brand destination so as to attract tourists. An equity brand consists of four factors as follows; brand loyalty, brand association, perceived quality and brand awareness. If these four dimensions are enhanced, we will obtain the brand equity of Mashhad destination. This paper uses analytical-descriptive method. The process of information gathering is based on the literature review survey and using questionnaires. Its analysis is done using AHP model. The study aims to analyze the dimensions of brand equity in Mashhad and then to evaluate the significance of brand equity in tourism products of the city. Finally, the study identifies the most influential factors of brand equity in Mashhad tourism industry and defines the weaknesses and strengthens of brand destination of the city.As the results illustrate, the most important factor of brand equity in Mashhad is the brand loyalty which leads to tourist attraction with the weight of 0.320 but other factors are less effective. Religious products with the weight of 0.571, recreational product with the weight of 0.321 and cultural & historical products with the weight of 0.107 are respectively the maximum and minimum of tourist attracting products in Mashhad.

کلیدواژه ها:

Tourism ، Brand ، AHP ، Mashhad