Importance of tourism in destination branding process :Bergama as a case study

ABSTRACT In today's world of branding, when it comes to the marketing of products or services, it becomes an indispensable element. Whether in the service sector or the industrial sector, brands are becoming increasingly important. The notion of brand incorporates a great number of elements. Brand loyalty is one of these concepts other than brand identity, personality, image. The rapid rise of the brand have brought along certain strategies. Brand identification, brand image creation, brand positioning and brand expansion strategies, which are expressed as branding strategies, are seen as strategies that institution often use in the branding process. Branding strategies can also be used in the city branding process. In the process of branding destinations, these strategies are mostly used in terms of the tourism factor. In this context, it is very important that a destination can attract tourists and thus become a center of attraction in a destination branding process. In order to ensure tourist attraction, it is necessary to use the historical and natural beauties of the city and other elements of the city in the foreground. It is very important to determine what type of tourism items the tourism destination has for its destination. The use of one of the major tourism varieties in the context of tourism, which is suitable for the destination, can contributes to a successful destination brand. Nowadays, tourists prefer alternative tourism varieties and for this reason destinations are positioning destination brands on alternative tourism varieties. Alternative tourism varieties, ecotourism, thermal tourism, river tourism, rural tourism, hunting tourism can be given as various examples. In the light of all the information, it has been endeavoured to investigate how the cultural, thermal and rural tourism items in Bergama's branding process were used in the destination branding of Bergama and the tourism perspective of Bergama's city branding. Some issues concerning the importance of tourism in the process of destination branding The importance of tourism in the Bergama case, how the tourism varieties are located in the Bergama destination, what kind of studies are made in this scope, how the studies are influenced on the city branding of Bergama and how the cultural tourism, thermal tourism and rural tourism have a pre- research constitute the purpose of the research. A qualitative research process has been designed to achieve this purpose of the research. In this semi-structured interview form, structured for this purpose, 7 questions were asked and the results were analyzed using content and descriptive analysis and finally the findings were interpreted. Key Words: Brand, Destination, Branding, Destination Branding, Tourism, Bergama.