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Social media users are increasingly harming destination brands through their posts. This article examines how to counter brand co-destruction in social media through the application of storytelling practices. Based on a netnography of TripAdvisor and Facebook, combined with a case study of the Danish destination management organization (DMO) VisitDenmark, the article investigates the prospective ways in which social media users co-destroy the DMO’s brand. We demonstrate how value creation is a fluid process generated along a “brand value continuum,” as complex interplays between co-creation and co-destruction manifest through user-generated content. The article provides recommendations on how DMOs can counter co-destruction by using storytelling to influence perceptions and set agendas for user conversations that stimulate brand co-creation.

While the quality of life (QoL) concept in tourism research has gained momentum, scholarly work has focused on host QoL and tourist-host relations, rather than exploring and analysing the perception, interpretation and understanding of QoL among different social groups in a given tourist destination. Macao is a densely populated tourism destination and designated World Centre of Tourism and Leisure, where local residents and migrants work and cohabit side by side. By broadening the scope of research through in-depth interviews, our research findings highlight how different social groups in Macao experience QoL differently. While all groups perceive positive economic impacts and appreciate career opportunities from tourism development, the analysis raises questions as to the QoL of residents and migrants, and the social sustainability of Macao. The study recommends that authorities embed a social sustainability focus in deliberations, policies and investment so as to achieve its goal of World Centre of Tourism and Leisure status, not only for tourists, but also for those who live and work there.

This paper examines the prospects of applying the Hollywood scriptwriting formula to a destination transforming a range of potentially disconnected tourist destination experiences into a more immersive, interrelated narrative and thereby generating a cohesive destination brand that has an emotional and personal bond with tourists. A step-by-step conceptual model, based on Hollywood's scriptwriting formula, is developed, contextualised and employed for the case study destination of Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania. The model offers destination management organisations an innovative new method of developing a destination brand centred on storytelling while the findings demonstrate that the scriptwriting approach creates a narrative for the destination that connects the various experiences in an experiential framework which carves out a brand that promises strong emotional and experiential benefits for tourists.This paper provides an original and novel rethink of how to construct the destination experience and formulate the destination brand, employing scriptwriting capabilities, rather than traditional marketing concepts.

In an increasingly competitive market for tourist destinations, visitor attractions play a key role in enticing visitors to the destination, and as such must continually develop new extraordinary experiential offerings to keep visitors coming. The Renaissance castle of Kronborg, a Danish heritage visitor attraction and the setting of Shakespeare's Hamlet, has shown the way by staging Hamlet Live, an interactive theatrical experience. Its success is due to the professional actors' co-creative performances and improvisations. In this study, based on observations, semi-structured interviews and thematic analysis of TripAdvisor reviews, we identify and describe seven interconnected elements that have made Hamlet Live successful in terms of revenue and visitor satisfaction. These elements form an experiential strategy framework that other heritage visitor attractions could use to create extraordinary experiences. We provide recommendations on which types of heritage visitor attraction could replicate the achievements of Kronborg's Hamlet Live.