Over the last decade, the business of Destination Marketing Organisations (DMOs) has changed significantly. Whereas most DMOs used to focus narrowly on city marketing and visitor welcome, today’s operations are much more complex and diverse. Today, lead destinations are tasked with ensuring sustainable and responsible practices in the visitor economy, understanding and managing visitor behaviour, facilitating public engagement and ensuring usage of smart applications across the urban landscape, and much more. “With the new brand identity – City Destinations Alliance – we recognize that destination leadership involves so much more than marketing”, City Destinations Alliance’s President Petra Stušek says.

“As a community of urban tourism professionals and an alliance of more than 115 European city destinations, we are as European as ever, we share the passion and love for urban experiencing and city life in general. As an alliance, our purpose is to improve quality of life in Europe’s cities. We are committed to a sustainable and responsible visitor economy that works for people, place, and planet,” states Stušek.

Geerte Udo, City Destinations Alliance’s Board member and Director of Amsterdam & Partners, has been part of the task force in charge of developing the new brand identity, and explains how the new brand identity was born; “Over the past six months, the ECM Board has led a collaborative process of member engagement and dialogue, market research and analysis of the global association landscape. It was important for us, that this brand like everything else in the Alliance, was developed for and by the members”, she says. “Our community is a unique culture with a high degree of trust, engagement, and professional curiosity – all of which helps catalyse the power to share… we wanted the new brand identity to reflect the familiar, yet progressive spirit of our community”, Geerte Udo says.