ASSESSMENT OF CULTURAL DESTINATION BRAND EQUITY OF HUE CITY: A STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS

Abstract

Brand is known as a very important tool to help destinations achieve their development goals and improve their competitiveness in the tourism market. In the context of attracting tourists is still limited compared to other types of tourism, cultural tourism destinations need to have specific assessments of their destination brand equity to have solutions to promote the ability to attract tourists and express the culture of the place and make others know. This study evaluates the cultural destination brand equity for the case of Hue city - ASEAN cultural city, heritage city of Vietnam by analyzing the path structure of the components of the destination brand equity for 431 questionnaires collected from domestic tourists to Hue. The research results show that the factors (1) brand awareness, (2) brand loyalty and (3) brand quality have an impact on the cultural destination brand equity of Hue city. From the results obtained, the study also proposed some management implications for enhancing the cultural destination brand equity of Hue city in the current context of tourism development in Hue city.