Naming and Framing a Marginal Tourism Destination Close to an Urban Tourism Hub: The Case of Campina de Faro

Taking the coastal plain of Campina de Faro by the Algarve coast as a case in point (cf. Batista, ERSA2023) this paper reports selected results of an investigation carried out by researchers of Copenhagen Business School in collaboration with the Portuguese Pilot under the H2020 project INCULTUM – Visiting the Margins. The point of departure is a special focus taken on Danish visitors to Algarve and their image (or lack of such) of Campina de Faro. More than 100.000 Danish tourists visit the Algarve coast per year, yielding it the third-largest destination in Portugal after Madeira and Lisbon. However, an exploratory survey among 117 recent Danish visitors to Portugal (among which 34% had visited Algarve) showed that only 5 persons (4%) had ever heard the name ‘Campina de Faro’ and only 3 had actually been there. Moreover, when the respondents at large were asked what they would imagine ‘Campina de Faro’ to be, 59% said they had had no idea at all while the rest expected it to be some facility or place in or near Faro – predominantly a camping site (17 respondents) or, alternatively, a lighthouse, an airport, etc.

On this background, continued research addresses the pivotal role of the name of a location (as illustrated by Campina de Faro) in crystallizing a salient and adequate place-brand image among key target audiences while also aligning it with the brand identity desired by local communities. In the case of Campina de Faro, a bottom-up participatory approach is for many reasons preferable to larger-scale marketing campaigns. This calls for a so-called low-budget route of brand development which presupposes a subtle interplay between the inherent properties of the name itself (the Joyce Principle) and cues immediately extractable from being physically (or virtually) preset at the location and/or in its immediate surroundings (the Juliet Principle). This renders it crucial what people actually see and do when exposed to the location and/or its name, and how the local inhabitants contribute to the brandbuilding process in word and deed. The latter aspect may include also, for instance, testimonies by older residents passing over knowledge and experience to younger generations, and to tourists.

The end goal is to set up operational guidelines to support organic naming and framing processes facilitating efficient place-brand building under the special conditions just outlined. For this, we rely, inter alia, on the results of ongoing follow-up investigations conducted on site.