Redefining the Catalan Tourism Board’s Brand portfolio

In the 2020-2021 periods, the Catalan Tourist Board (CTB) identified the need to transform some of its internal work and organization processes, to achieve greater efficiency in the way of working and a better adaptation to the dynamic and changing environment of the tourism sector, increasingly digitized, as well as an improved value proposition for the Catalan tourist sector.

This process contemplated finding solutions, methods and new work tools, among which a necessary change in the organization’s Brand Portfolio was identified. The CTB’s Brand Portfolio was the main system for organizing the Catalan tourist product and a tool that included 19 brands or product categories, which grouped together the different tourism proposals of the sector and, especially, those of its affiliates. This tool was not very flexible when it came to projecting the Catalan tourism product to foreign markets, and it especially hindered the role of the CTB’s Experiences Marketing Unit (UME in catalan).

Thus, the main objective of this project was to help the CTB’s Experiences Marketing Unit to redesign the current (at that time) Brand Portfolio, to improve its value proposition and adapt it to the current needs of the Tourism Marketing Comprehensive System of Catalonia (SIMTC).

The specific objectives of this project were:

1. Identify and analyze the main points of improvement of the current brand system based on the axes of transformation of the Catalan Tourist Board (Sustainability, Innovation and Digitization).
2. Restructure the current Brand Portfolio to increase efficiency in the management, the internal organization and improvement of value to the sector, based on the points of improvement identified in the first objective.
3. Contrast with partners the model of the new portfolio and integrate it into the Comprehensive Tourism Marketing System of Catalonia (SIMTC).

To achieve the stated objectives, Pax# organized 8 workshops with the entire UME team, in which the foundations were laid for joint reflection on what were the main objectives in which the Unit should focus, and how the Brand Portfolio could contribute or, otherwise, hinder the achievement of its mission, vision and value proposition as a department.

During the different workshops, aspects such as the redefinition of the main guidelines of the UME (its mission, vision and value proposition); the need to simplify and seek coherence in the concepts and internal work processes in order to be more effective, which were redefined by the whole team in a consensual manner; the development of the UME system and its map of actors; the focus on a new tool (the matrix) that would be the center of the new project management; the functioning of hyper-segmentation in marketing and its importance in the Unit’s proposal; among other aspects were addressed.

Finally, the Portfolio of 19 brands was modified into 6 unique Programs with different categories, which would serve to organize the Catalan tourism product and project it abroad through different annual promotional actions and projects.

This was a work of awareness, guidance and reflection, in which the Pax# team played a mentoring or leadership role that helped to formalize certain necessary changes in the internal organization of the Experiences Marketing Unit, and also of the Catalan Tourism Board.

The participation, predisposition and the debate generated in the different work sessions by the whole UME team helped to clear up doubts, clarify concepts and made that all these changes were consensually agreed by the whole team.