The Santa Elena Brand as an instrument for tourism positioning

Abstract

The tourist brand is interpreted as the identity and graphic expression of a destination, such expression is the instrument that the province of Santa Elena needs to differentiate itself within the national tourism market. The purpose of this study is to create an empowered tourism brand for the province in order to achieve the positioning of the destination and generate a positive vision in the minds of local, national and foreign tourists. This descriptive exploration is based on bibliographic contributions, applying a scientific methodology, through solid statistical results obtained accompanied by the reasoning of the perceptions and behaviors of the actors and elements that make up the local tourism system. For this purpose, surveys of closed questions were used, analyzed and validated by professors of the Santa Elena Peninsula State University, accompanied by structured and semi-structured interviews. The results allowed to recognize the components with greater acceptance for the design, directed to the cultural and natural wealth; subsequently the brand design is elaborated based on the elements that yielded the information gathering and; as a last point, the impulse phrase that accompanies the Santa Elena brand is established. In conclusion, the brand proposal is an iconic image with great potential, allowing to discover the importance of the inhabitants in feeling represented, while tourists went from being simple spectators to co-authors of the brand.