How to brand a destination with Sense of Place
Regional Residents & Businesses at the centre of ‘Sense of Place’
Given that brand meanings are socially constructed and culturally dependent, a destination branding strategy should begin by understanding what constitutes ‘sense of place’ as experienced by local residents, and local businesses. It is important to have destination branding position the people of the place at front and centre, alongside the region’s physical attributes, for the development of an effective destination brand. (Campelo, 2018)
On top of this, a branding strategy, should show the influence of heritage – history, the geography – landscape and weather, as well as the cultural timeline on how these social and physical environmental pillars have formed this community in the destination, in helping visitors identify with, and feel like a welcome ‘honorary local’ with this ‘sense of place’.
Understanding Sense of Place from a Visitor’s View
With the beginning of the summer school holidays, Australian Regional Tourism operators have the opportunity to tap into potential visitors who would normally be travelling overseas. This is a prime reason to use ‘sense of place’ in destination branding, to connect with this high-value-traveller sector, making them feel welcome and proud of the nation that they live in, though may not have spent the time to travel within, until now. Below is a story, a practical application of my own thoughts as a frequent international traveller, and tourism operator, rediscovering my own back yard and rediscovering my, and my children’s own identity through ‘sense of place’, of our ancient land and the authentic regional communities visited …
NSW Outback Riverina or French Riviera?
We’d normally be long-hauling to Saint Tropez, in France, working at our holiday retreat venue, bordering the star-studded French Riviera coast. Though due to COVID travel bans here in Australia, our only option was an intrastate sojourn. Katrina grew up in Sydney, Christophe in France, and we call the Northern Beaches home, with twins Maya and Rémy, who had never been further west than Bathurst, yet know Europe like the back of their 11 year old hands.
We’re no strangers to road trips, strapping the kids in and taking scenic routes along the Pacific highway between Brisbane, Northern Rivers and Sydney a couple of times a year, visiting family and checking in on our Byron Bay coastal rainforest venue.
A road tour really is something else. Having grown up with poetic travel novels, On the Road by Jack Kerouac, The Pilgrimage by Paulo Coehlo, we see the journey as the highlight, not just the destination. Travelling to our honeymoon 15 years ago, our onward flight was cancelled, as the Bahamas island we were to be honeymooning on, had all but been blown away by a hurricane. It was one of the those movie-style reality check moments, standing in JFK New York airport at 11pm, convincing ourselves that we weren’t the Bahamas beach resort type anyway, and what flights there were on the departures board that we could jump on. Jetting into the Las Vegas desert instead at 2am, we found an old convertible hire car, and began roadtripping the famous Route 66 – traversing statelines from Las Vegas to Albuquerque – the best honeymoon ever.
It’s all our kids know as well, experiential touring, having not been allowed screens or gadgets in cars until 10 years old, and even now, only playing on screens after 3 hours have passed, and not when passing through towns, or areas of historic or natural interest.
So a roadtrip was planned, as intrepidly far as we were allowed to go, into deepest NSW instead of jetting to Saint Tropez, covering 3000km within the closed borders. We wanted to do our bit, help with the NSW tourism rebound, and for Maya and Rémy to learn about Outback NSW. Katrina also seeks knowledge to pass on in her postgraduate lecturing in gastronomic tourism & sustainable business, being a clinical nutrition and tourism practitioner. After speaking to several sustainable tourism providers, and hearing of their readiness to open, their wellness measures put in place, we planned out what we could do to help travel responsibly, to benefit these outback host communities.
We took off in our trusty ‘city’ four-wheel drive, first stop being Yass … who could go past a town with that name? A friendly café welcomed us, our family of four being one of the first groups of travellers after lockdown lifted. We were discovering first hand how the COVID lockdown, droughts and fires have affected NSW regional tourism.
Our first night was in Griffith, at a homestead-style motor inn – where the ochre red-dirt coloured roof matched the brilliant red western skies at sunset. Breakfast was at the legendary Bertoldo’s bakery, pleasing the Frenchman amongst us. Produce tasting and learnings of the Riverina region’s immigrant agriculture history was a delicious way to start off our second day. Having bought some of the local Goat-Chaser spicy condiment range, we set off to chase some wild goats of our own at the Hermit’s Cave, an almost-luxury cliff dwelling of a previous Italian immigrant, with Riverina views to die for.
Passing grain silos, wineries out of town, we then traversed the stunningly bare Hay plains, playing a squinting eye game: saltbush or sheep? … kangaroo or tree stump? The one-café town of Balranald was our next base, in a caravan park cabin on the banks of the Murray River. A winter BBQ dinner over a firepit, paired with red wine & Riverina condiments, we toasted the magical river redgums lining the eroded banks. The family lay under the mighty branches, looking up at them, whilst Katrina read to them learnings of the Murray-Darling water sustainability situation, the fragile eco-system, alongside the fragile communities dependent on these.
We spent a day with a local eco-tour operator, guiding us through the ancient history, native flora and fauna and dramatic landscapes of Mungo National Park, under a full moon. We felt as if we were under a spell, the moonscape dunes lit up by the full moon; we had timed this tour well. It’s where Mungo Woman & Mungo Man were discovered, with Mungo Man hopefully soon to be repatriated back under the sacred earth there. We were lucky enough to be also accompanied by a local Muthi Muthi woman, whose family was instrumental in bringing Mungo Man back to his homeland. She suggested we take off our shoes whilst we walked, reflecting on the ancient sand dunes, not only to feel the spirit of the land through our bare soles, though also to respect these spirits, and the brothers and sisters buried under their sacred sites, as she watched on from the viewing area.
Next stop was orange groves and wineries of the Mildura region, and to tick off a bucket list item of Katrina’s – seeing a Sturt Desert Pea in the wild, at the Inland Botanic Gardens.
Heading north following the closed South Australian border, we hit the Outback proper, realising how prepared you need to be, checking the weather, checking spare tyres and checking how far away petrol stations are – you can drive for 250kms and not see one. Our normal roadtrip games were few are far between, as there was only one car passing every 15minutes – a little hard to play our roadtrip games ‘make a sentence from number plate letters’ or ‘imagine up up a story on how the creek got its name’, as every creek was called Dry Lake.
On reaching Broken Hill we learned of the silver mining history and the importance of tourism now, interviewing locals, who were more than happy to chat to city-siders – it had been a long time with the droughts and COVID lockdown.
A million star hotel and campground, an outback farmstay station was the type of experiential accommodation you could only dream of, sleeping in sheep shearer’s quarters, on a never-ending cattle station, spending time fossicking for geology finds during the day, and campfires and star gazing at night. Driving the 30km of red sand roads between Eldee and Silverton, the Mundi Mundi Plains are so flat, you can see the curvature of the earth, the only buildings dotting the area is the desert town of Silverton, showcasing the film sets for Mad Max movies.
In White Cliffs Maya found a few opal shards, proudly displaying them on the bedside table of our underground motel, where the rabbit warren of rooms were a white painted version of the neighbouring opal mines.
Our return roadtrip travelled along straight smooth roads, with Orange as the last night – authentic basic accommodation above a workmans’ pub, keeping in theme with the trip, and a lovely long Sunday lunch with winemaker friends, who continued to show the true authentic hospitality we had encountered throughout Outback NSW.
It may not have been Saint Tropez, though there were more stars, and shining jewels in this spectacular land. We really felt as if we’d found ‘home’ again, at one, with the learnings of the ancestry and community heart of this wide brown land of ours.
In summary … Sense of Place is an understanding of the meaning bestowed upon a physical, geographical location, not just by local residents, but also visitors identifying with the story, & the people behind the place. The practical application in this article shows a promising framework for understanding how tourism development can change in the understanding of what visitors are seeking, and the showcasing of the character of a destination for discovery by all demographics of visitors.
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Katrina Denoux is one of the Ambassadors for Australian Regional Tourism. A tourism practitioner with her own business based both in Europe and Australia, she is also a registered health practitioner with postgraduate qualifications. She specialises in wellness tourism, gastronomy & agri-tourism, & sustainability; and is a lecturer and speaker on the international academic insights circuit.
References
Campelo A, Aitken R, Thyne M, Gnoth J. Sense of Place: The Importance for Destination Branding. Journal of Travel Research. 2014;53(2):154-166. doi:10.1177/0047287513496474