Internal branding in tourism destinations: Implications for tourism policy and research

The question "How do destination-branding strategies influence destination stakeholders?" has not been answered yet. This paper examines the role of internal branding in destinations, its mechanisms and its possible influence on destination stakeholders. After presenting a literature review of recent contributions to the field of branding in tourism destinations, the authors discuss the concept of internal branding and derive a research structure that can help to design future research to collect empirical data about internal branding effects within tourism destinations. The paper proposes to model the impacts and process flows of internal branding within destinations and to evaluate the impacts not only on customers but also on internal destination stakeholders.