Nowadays, many destinations are branding themselves to attract tourists and travellers. Tourists infuse money into these economies, and thus all these destinations get benefitted by economic growth as well as job creations. But like products and services, these destinations too are vying on similar attributes and they all look alike. Hong Kong too is in the same race. The objective of this paper is to find out the attributes which differentiate Hong Kong from other destinations. A differentiated destination brand identity of Hong Kong will eventually help the stakeholders of Hong Kong's tourism industry to position themselves on unique attributes. Kapferer's brand identity prism is taken as the approach to establish Hong Kong's destination brand identity. Kapferer's brand identity prism is an effective tool to build and communicate the brand identity across various platforms.

Travel and tourism has now become a global industry, and according to the World Tourism Organization (WTO), it is one of the fastest growing industries. It helps nations to enhance their GDP and helps societies in generating employment opportunities. It also helps the country to popularize its culture and the economy to attract more Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). Therefore, this industry has gradually become a major source for the countries to enhance their image and in turn get benefitted by the inflow of money in terms of investments and tourist spending. But in today's highly competitive market, each and every country is trying hard to attract more and more tourists to their countries. Therefore, now the countries have started using the marketing strategies which so far were used to promote other products and services. One of the most important strategies is branding. Countries have started branding themselves to have competitive edge over each other. A strong country brand helps the host country to position itself on the mind of tourists and it also protects from any kind of bad name or disaster (for example the slogan `I Love New York' drew back the tourists to this city after the September 11 attack on World Trade Center

Kotler et al. (1999) have defined place marketing as "a place planning procedure concerning the satisfaction of the needs of target markets. It could be successful when it satisfies two main parameters, (1) The enterprise and residents' satisfaction from purchase of goods and services that the place provides (2) the satisfaction of the expectations of the potential target markets." Keller (2005) has said that geographic locations like products and services, can also be branded, which will make people aware of the location and will help in the growth of tourism and business as well.

The branding of places has evolved in different ways. Kavaratzis (2005) has talked about different trends of evolution of this concept. Earlier, around 2000, the concept of `nation branding' was only within the circle of marketing consultants who were also the advisors to their respective national governments. Their objective was to use the positive effect of nation branding to attract tourists and foreign investments, but they did not have the proper skills to design and implement branding campaigns and strategies. After 2002, the destination marketer started realizing that the destinations' images are being judged during the first-hand experience of the tourists during their visit. They realized that this branding effort would not only help in attracting more tourists and foreign investments, it would also play a critical role in different community development programs, because this branding effort required the coordination among different agencies and organizations of a particular destination.

Brand Management Journal, Destination Branding, Foreign Direct Investment, FDI, World Tourism Organization, WTO, Marketing Strategies, Branding Campaigns, Foreign Investments, Community Development Programs, Product Branding, Marketing Campaign, Brand Building Process, Destination Marketing, Indian Tea Industry, Debt Instruments, Travel Industry Compensation Fund, Hong Kong Tourism.