Henrik Halkier

Contemplating Place Branding Umbrellas. The Case of Coordinated National Tourism and Business Promotion in Denmark

This paper examines the area of cross‐sectoral branding where tourism is combined with other international economic activities in order to construct a common national umbrella brand. From a theoretical perspective the article contributes to the study of cross‐sectoral place branding by developing a coherent analytical framework, drawing on recent contributions to the study of Other images and inter‐organizational relations. On the basis of this, an empirical case study of the prospects for establishing a cross‐sectoral umbrella brand is undertaken, focusing on Danish national tourism and inward investment promotion bodies. Having analysed both the rationales behind and the image profiles of current branding efforts, it is concluded that while disagreement exists at the strategic level with regard to the potentials of umbrella branding, the differences between the current image profiles are of a more manageable character. In the case of Danish tourism and investment promotion, barriers to interorganizational cooperation, in other words, seem to be founded on unfavourable assumptions about potential alliance partners in view of own future aspirations rather than the present branding actions of the actors involved.

Mussels, Tourism and Community Development: A Case Study of Place Branding Through Food Festivals in Rural North Jutland, Denmark

Abstract Rural areas are facing prospects of marginalization and peripherality in an age of globalization where the attention of governments and media focuses increasingly on the (lack of) competitiveness of urban and metropolitan regions in Europe. Many rural areas have, therefore, searched for ways to improve their position vis-à-vis other localities by mobilizing local resources and employing policy tools that are believed to foster indigenous social and economic development, including place branding. Unsurprisingly, using food as a means to profile rural localities has become widespread, with branding efforts revolving around local food festivals that commodify local cultural resources. The article attempts to illuminate the challenges faced by branding processes in rural areas through a case study of Løgstør, a small rural town in North Jutland, Denmark, which builds its branding efforts around an annual mussel festival. The analysis focuses on the relationship between stakeholders and branding strategies, and in particular aims to uncover the role of the food festival in aggravating or alleviating inherent tensions between different stakeholders and target groups. It is argued that in the case of Løgstør making a food festival pivotal, a signature event for the place branding efforts has been created, which appeals to both external and internal audiences, and that this may hold wider lessons for place-branding initiatives in other small towns across Europe.

Governance, institutional change and regional development

Part 1 Introduction: regional governance, institutional change and regional development, Mike Danson et al. Part 2 Partnership and regional development: the European partnership model and the changing role of regional development agencies - a regional development and organization perspective, Greta Cameron and Mike Danson developing a culture of collaboration concepts and experiences in a regional context, Thomas Jud et al local development networks in England, Cecilia Wong. Part 3 Networking and regional governance: development bodies, networking and business promotion - the case of North Jutland, Denmark, Henrik Halkier and Charlotte Damborg cohesion policy and the role of RDAs in the making of an intelligent region - lessons from the Southern European periphery, Grigoris Kafkalas and Elisavet Thoidou regional government in the United Kingdom - democratic representation or economic success? Peter Garside persuasive storytelling about the reform process - the case of the West Sweden region, Christian Jensen and Svante Leijon. Part 4 Regional development and multi-level governance: towards the end of a Norwegian regional policy model? Oddbjorn Bukve the regionalisation of Danish regional policy - governance and resource dependencies in transition, Henrik Halkier EU and national regional policies in Austria, Ruth Downes. Part 5 Perspective: institutional change, governance and regional development - problems and perspectives, Greta Cameron et al.

EU and Tourism Development: Bark or Bite?

Abstract In the absence of major programmes to strengthen the quality and competitiveness of European destinations, the role of the EU in tourism development has often been seen as fairly limited. Despite this, spill‐overs or side effects from adjoining policy areas with extensive European regulation or intervention can be equally important, and the paper examines key aspects of the EU’s role in tourism development in order to discuss to what extent the traditional interpretation of a passive actor of little consequence should be modified or even discarded. Drawing upon European and Nordic documentary sources as well as existing specialist literature, the text first examines the development of an EU policy statement on tourism, and then two areas of EU policy – competition policy and regional development – are analysed with a view to establishing side‐effects in European and Nordic destinations. It is concluded that while policies specifically targeting tourism have been limited in reach and profile, the touristic side effects of other economic and social policies central at the European level have clearly been considerable, primarily by facilitating the emergence of new multinational tour operators and budget airlines, but also by supporting development of new services and experiences in parts of Europe where tourism has until now been a socio‐economic activity of relatively limited importance.

Innovation and Destination Governance in Denmark: Tourism, Policy Networks and Spatial Development

Abstract For more than a decade, tourist destinations in Denmark have experienced decreasing market shares and numbers of international visitors in comparison with the early 1990s. Despite this stagnation, destination development initiatives and national tourism policies have continued largely unaltered, relying on traditional efforts like collective marketing and local visitor information services, while giving limited priority to innovation-oriented measures that could improve the international attractiveness of Danish destinations by renewing the tourist experiences available. The article argues (1) that important reasons for the slow adoption of new destination development strategies can be found in the domination of tourism-related policy networks by short-term sectoral and localist interests, and (2) that recent reforms of subnational and sectoral governance have only improved the prospects of introduction of more innovation-oriented destination development policies to a limited extent.

Knowledge Dynamics, Regions and Public Policy

The development of a so-called knowledge economy remains a widespread ambition for Europe. The Lisbon Strategy aimed to make EU “the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world” (European Council, 2000), and the current “Europe 2020” strategy is even more ambitious because knowledge is seen as a prerequisite not only for economic growth but also for social cohesion (European Commission, 2010). At a regional scale, this ambition has been translated into economic development policies that draw heavily on concepts from Regional Studies and Economic Geography in aiming to support “clusters”, innovative “milieus” and “triple helix” relations (Amara, 2005; Lagendijk, 2006; Rutten & Boekema, 2007; Borras & Tsagdis, 2008).These policies reflect what have become almost axiomatic assumptions about the benefits of geographical proximity, institutional thickness and the development of close relationships/knowledge exchange between firms and other organizations in sectorally defined regional agglomerations of economic activity. To be successful, however, public policies must reflect and respond to current economic structures and processes, and the relationship between public policy and economic development remains intricate and ambiguous. At best, policy-makers will target perceived causes of, for example, slow growth or low levels of innovation in a particular region, but the effects of public initiatives may still be uncertain due to the complex interaction between local and global processes. Policy-making is not just a rationalistic exercise in problem-solving but a heterogeneous multi-tier political process prone to path dependency with regard to governance, strategies and implementation, and hence public initiatives may point to all sorts of directions.

From Local Promotion Towards Regional Tourism Policies: Knowledge Processes and Actor Networks in North Jutland, Denmark

Public policies promoting the development of tourist destinations, not least in North-western Europe, have traditionally focused on attracting more tourists through local promotional activities, but in many localities these have now been supplemented by strategies that attempt to change the tourist product on offer, often operating at the regional level, and thus, tourism policies have changed with regard to scale, aims and instruments. Research on the tourism policy has mainly centred on the difficulties inherent in destination development with regard to orchestrating changes in the wide raft of services, typically provided by small local firms, that make up the tourist experience, while less attention has been given to an important prerequisite for these new, product-development strategies, namely the process of policy change from local promotion towards regional tourism policies, despite the potential difficulties involved in shifting geographical scales of governance and adopting a more risky focus on new types of visitors. The aim of this article is to investigate the factors that drive or hamper the tourism policy change from localized marketing towards regional innovation strategies, focusing especially on the role of stakeholder networks and knowledge processes in overcoming spatial fragmentation and product conservatism. Adopting an institutionalist perspective, an in-depth case study of a destination management organization, “Top of Denmark”, situated at the tip of one of northern Europes prime locations for seaside tourism, is undertaken in order to identify factors that drive or hamper the policy change from localized marketing towards regional, product-development initiatives. This article concludes that the issue of localism has been effectively addressed by establishing and operating as a network-based body where individual stakeholders are mutually dependant on the specific capacities of their partners, a consensual style of decision-making is prevailing, and a division of labour has been established that engages local actors in destination-wide tasks while at the same time enabling them to maintain close links with small tourism businesses in their area. Both in the emergence and in the redevelopment of the organization, the internal wish for change has clearly been stimulated by extra-destinational incentives, but the perceived success of the early, joint-marketing activities has clearly made the current focus on product-development activities easier.

Exploring tourism destination path plasticity

Abstract Path dependency is an acknowledged characteristic of tourism due to a majority of small and micro-sized firms and with that limited resourceful actors who can engage actively in path creation through development of new services and experiences. The aim of this paper is to analyse the socio-economic institutions that have facilitated the rise of coastal tourism, and on the basis of this to gauge the scope for incremental change, or plasticity, within the prevailing development path. The paper can be seen as an explorative study of the micro-dynamics of path plasticity, adopting a casestudy-based approach, exploring two coastal-rural destinations in North Jutland, Denmark. First a review of the literature on destination development and innovation is undertaken in order to identify key issues concerning continuity and change in tourism as a spatially embedded socio-economic activity. Then a conceptual framework for the analysis is outlined, inspired by traditions within institutionalism. Thirdly, the empirical analysis begins by identifying the key institutions supporting the rise of North Jutland as a successful international tourist destination in the 1980s and 1990s, and finally we discuss the extent to which scope for path plasticity can be found within this framework in the current climate of crisis, focusing especially on the role of combinatorial knowledge and policy agency. It is concluded that coastal tourism despite resemblances of an institutional ‘iron triangle’ actually is a more flexible structure which allows for a considerable degree of incremental change, provided that the actors involved are willing to engage in innovative development activities within the existing institutional framework.

Regional Policy in Transition - A Multi-level Governance Perspective on the Case of Denmark

Denmark would appear to be a radical, but overlooked, example of the general Western European trend away from national top-down schemes towards a situation where regional policy is a multi-level activity in which European and regional actors are heavily involved. In order to analyse such transformations the article first proposes a conceptual framework capable of accounting for different forms of regional policy and their interaction, and then applies it to the Danish case. The analysis of inter-organizational relations, strategies and resource dependencies show that in Denmark the new paradigm in regional policy resembles a decentralized form of industrial policy in which regionally-based actors play a major role via their organizational and informational resources, but that central government still plays a major role as a regulator of the activities of other actors within a multi-level institutional setting.

Knowledge Dynamics and Policies for Regional Development: Towards a New Governance Paradigm

If regional policies are to make a difference, they must address the underlying issues that propel growth in successful regions and hamper development in others. This implies that in the wake of structural changes like the ongoing change from an industrial towards a knowledge-economy paradigm, policies for regional economic development must be reconsidered. This article reviews the development of new forms of regional policy in the context of the governance challenges created by the emergence of new knowledge dynamics. Having outlined a conceptual framework and reviewed the literature on the transformation of regional policy in Europe, the article explores current policy patterns in European regions, combining the results of a survey of the policies regional development bodies in European regions, and the findings about the impact of public policies on the basis of an extensive series of in-depth case studies of economic change processes in firms and regions. It is concluded that although important changes have taken place with regard to adopting policies to emerging processes in the knowledge economy, further adjustments may be called for in order for localities to fully benefit from new knowledge dynamics in an increasingly global era.