Marketing Wales as a tourism destination: Promoting fact or romantic fiction?

Many Western European regions are developing new strategies and new skills bases in order to remain competitive in the world economy. These include 're-branding' and the adoption of other contemporary marketing practices. This paper explores whether these marketing practices, in particular those relating to strategic marketing communications, are transferable to such complex issues as promoting nations as tourism destinations. The findings represent the first stage of a research project that has used content analysis and grounded theory techniques in an attempt to categorise various elements of marketing communications relating to tourism in Wales within the strategic marketing model of the Wheel of Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC). An analysis of the initial data indicates that there is evidence of conflict and incongruence in the marketing messages that would appear to be a violation of the one-voice principle underlying IMC. The paper concludes with suggestions of how the second phase of this research may aid the formulation of a revised, and more applicable approach to marketing places.