Will Climate Change Kill Santa Claus? Climate Change and High-Latitude Christmas Place Branding

Abstract

Place branding and marketing has become essential for the promotion of tourist destinations. Yet despite the significance of environmental attributes for place branding there is surprisingly little research on the impacts of climate change on place brand values. The paper examines these issues with respect to the development of Santa-related place myths in high-latitude place branding strategies and highlights the way in which the Santa place myth is built on the social construction of Santa's winter home replete with snow, pine trees and reindeer. The imagined country of Christmas is, therefore, regarded as extremely susceptible to climate change and while some locations seek to guarantee snow security to tourists others may be more marginal. The paper, therefore, concludes that from a tourism marketing and planning standpoint, it is essential that the immaterial dimensions of destination promotion, such as place branding, require as much attention with respect to the effects of climate change as do the material.

Key Words:

• place competition
• authenticity
• environmental change
• Father Christmas
• Christmas tourism

Acknowledgements

Earlier versions of the work on which this paper is based were published in French (Hall, 2009) and presented at the FiDiPro seminar “Human-environment relations in the North”, Thule Institute, University of Oulu, Finland, February 2009. The author is grateful for the comments received from these presentations and from the two anonymous reviewers. The usual caveats apply.