According to the newly released Bloom Consulting Country Brand Ranking © 2013, in the Americas, Belize Nation Brand ranks 28th in Tourism and 30th in Trade. Bloom Consulting has just announced the release of its Bloom Consulting Country Branding Ranking © 2013.
According to the recent Google study “The 2012 Traveler”, 70% of leisure travelers begin researching their trip online without a specific destination or mode of travel in mind and according to The Economist Intelligence Unit more than 58% of investors assess investment risk online, against 49% who consult directly with their financial advisors. This is a clear indicator that countries, regions and cities, regardless of their size, can impact tourists and investors in a completely new way, compared to 5 years ago
As a reference, in 2012 alone, tourists made around 375.000.000 online searches related to tourism activities at a country level and investor made around 63.000.000 online searches related to investment activities at a country level.
With this in mind, Bloom Consulting has developed a proprietary tool, the Online Search Demand (OSD ©), in order to understand the online behavior of potential tourists and investors. The ranking covers two dimensions, Trade and Tourism.
Here are the results for the Americas Rank. In Trade, the U.S.A., unsurprisingly with no rivals, came 1st, with a Trade Ranking score considerably higher than that of the other top 10 countries. Canada stayed in 2nd place, Brazil ranked 3rd, demonstrating its resoluteness to be seen as the top investment destination. Mexico remained in 4th place, Chile ranked 5th, unchanged from last year, Peru’s (7) position and CBS Rating © improved while Argentina (8) moved down one place, with both countries completely ignoring social media. Uruguay (9) and the Cayman Islands (10) received very similar ratings to one another, with their ranking scores quite lower than that of Argentina’s. The Cayman Islands is a new country to appear in the top 10 and the only country representing the Caribbean.
In Tourism, the top five includes the U.S. (1), Mexico (2), Canada (3), Argentina (4) and Brazil (5), indicating that the big nations are dominating the Americas. Mexico’s brand ranks slightly better than Canada’s brand. Mexico has more online appeal and has more of an online presence, even though Canada’s tourism receipts have been increasing faster. Similarly, Argentina’s brand is slightly stronger than Brazil’s, however Argentina’s CBS Rating © is a lot stronger than Brazil’s. The South American giant, however, is rapidly catching up with the other four and next year there may be further shifts in the top positions.
Please Download Both Rankings for TRADE and TOURISM here: http://www.bloom-consulting.com/en/country-brands-ranking
About the Ranking and Methodology
The Bloom Consulting Country Brand Ranking © is derived from the Bloom Algorithm. This ranking does not try to measure solely country brand perception. The objective of this ranking is to classify how well each and every country is doing in terms of branding, that is, to measure how effective their brands are in the most tangible and realistic manner.
In order for Bloom Consulting to classify the effectiveness of each Country Brand, we analyzed 4 key variables for each of the 187 countries featuring in this Brand Ranking (see figure bellow). Through statistical modeling, Bloom Consulting was able to rank the countries in order to compare them with one another. The Algorithm takes into consideration each country’s economic level of development. The result is an accurate and objective Brand Ranking based on hard and soft data. Moreover, the Bloom Algorithm takes into consideration a country’s performance in Bloom Consulting’s rankings from previous years in order to leverage Country Brand equity.
How the Ranking is calculated:
