Critical issues in destination (re)branding: Evidence from Zimbabwe’s national tourism organisation

Abstract

Zimbabwe went through an unprecedented political and economic crisis between 1999 and 2009 which had severe effects on its tourism and other productive sectors. The main objective of this study was to identify the critical issues Zimbabwe needed to address to re-brand itself as a competitive tourist destination since the subsiding of the crisis in March 2009. Data to fulfill the study's objective was gathered through a questionnaire administered to employees of the country's national tourism organisation, the Zimbabwe Tourism Authority. Six critical issues that influence nation re-branding were extracted from the data using principal component analysis. The tentative managerial implication of the paper was that Zimbabwe needed to consider the six key issues in its tourism destination re-branding effort. The academic implication of the study was that the issues need to be further empirically tested with data from representative samples of respondents drawn from a wide range of stakeholders in tourism destination marketing.