Perception of city slogans in destination branding process: Eskisehir sample

In today's world which globalizes; cities, regions and nations are in a great competition to attract entrepreneurs and visitors. In this sense, the tourism destinations need to spend effort by a branding strategy to reach their goals. Besides it's student city image, city of Eskişehir which becomes a significant market in terms of domestic tourism day by day, proceeds rapidly to become a brand city in tourism industry by revealing it's existing tourism potential. An active brand positioning, will help the destinations to reach larger mass. In this direction, some of the components of destination brand like logo, symbol and slogan become more significant. Drawing attentions to the city by creating an emotional tie between visitors and destination provides the interests of all stakeholders. Slogans are the sentence groups which introduce a brand and convince the consumers to buy. That is why, designating a slogan which reflects the identity of destination and which is proper for marketing goals, will make a significant contribution to the studies of destination branding to be successful. While several destinations in the world have slogans, the slogan ''I Love New York'' which is identified with New York and the slogan ''I Amsterdam'' which is used by Amsterdam are rare examples that can be shown on this topic. In this study, the perception of visitors against the slogan ''Şehir Eskişehir'dir'' (The City Is Eskişehir) has been examined and the contributions of the slogan to the city during the destination branding process has been investigated. At the results of the research, participants indicated that the slogan ''Şehir Eskişehir'dir'' contains all the elements that a good slogan needs to have. They also indicated that the best parts of the slogan are, it is short and rhymed and easy to remember. Besides that, although they did not have any negative approaches they thought that the slogan's confusedness and persuasiveness are weak when it is compared with others. KEYWORDS: Brand, Slogan, City Slogans, Destination Branding.