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Thursday, August 30, 2018

Branding And Improving The Image And Reality of Chile and other Countries for Tourists



The BBC ran an article about branding countries to tourists and investors. Yes, Chile's mountains reflected in water look beautiful. But so are the Lake District in the UK, the fjords in Norway, and the mountains in New Zealand.

Unique Selling Point
What's unique about Chile? The mountains reflected in water are lovely. However, the giant cacti are an equal or better unique selling point.

Image Improvement
Reading the BBC news article about branding countries including Chile, my opinion is your image does not improve by making your logo a new colour but by having something special and different to see.

But even that won't work when crime makes the headlines. It's no good having a pretty logo when the news says that somebody just got killed in your capital city and the crime rate is not going down but up. Don't invest your time and money in hushing up the crime. Invest in catching criminals and reassuring tourist that they are being protected.

Priority Spending
Also, not investing and donating overseas but in fixing crime and danger and inconvenience in your own country. We learned when the Americans stopped coming to the UK during a crisis that the tourist industry, the hotels, depend not so much on ten packpackers but as on one elderly couple booking the hotel suite for their holiday of a lifetime.

If your nearest and dearest got mugged in a city you don't go back, however pretty the logo. See Naples and die - supposed to mean it's on your bucket list. Unfortunaely might have another conotation.

Top Tourists
A few high payers make a ten per cent difference to the profit which was the difference between profit and loss. (Admittedly, the middle aged elderly couple in the three, four or five star hotel may be there to watch over their student offspring or boy scout nearby at a hostel or in a tent in a field on a cheap summer trip.)

What Needs Fixing
The UK and USA need to stop sending money overseas and fix their own crime and social deprivation. In the UK we have roads, the NHS, crime and pensions which need fixing before dealing with everybody else's problems. Fix your family first, your country second, the world third.

Brexit Bother
Brexit is proving a huge waste of taxpayers and ministers' time and money. We are importing criminals and imprisoning them with nothing to do but learn new crime methods from each others when they should be trained to perform useful work and sent home to help. We need full employment worldwide so everybody can make their own clothes, and shoes, grow and cook food and build and repair their own houses - to safety standards.

Internet Advantages
The internet is doing a good job spreading health advice and great ideas and we have both children and adults working on inventions and projects such as bringing toilets and wind-up radios to schools and remote villages.


Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

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