Placebrandz

Contact us at info@placebrandz.com


















Our team consists of:

Robert Govers is Adjunct Associate Professor, holding the Visit Flanders Chair in Tourism Management at the Consortium University of Leuven, Belgium. He specializes in the field of place branding, tourism, hospitality and quality management, e-commerce in tourism and tourism research and marketing. Dr. Govers is also a project manager and is involved in many consultancy projects for organisations such as IATA, the EU & Dutch/Belgium governmental departments. Recently he served as Research Coordinator at the Flemish Center for Tourism Policy Studies. Prior to this, Dr. Govers worked as a senior lecturer in tourism and marketing in Dubai. With Frank Go he is the author of Place Branding: Glocal, virtual and physical identities constructed, imagined and experienced (published in 2009 with Palgrave).



Gerard van Keken currently serves as an independent consultant, project- and eventmanager, and lecturer in the Netherlands and Nanjing (China) and works on his PhD at Erasmus University Rotterdam. After travelling Europe, the Middle & Far East, Australia and North America extensively for some years in his younger days, Gerard has been involved in many consultancy projects for organisations, entrepreneurs and governing authorities. His research interests are coastal and rural development/tourism, culinary tourism, cultural ( tourism) event management, creative industries, (brand) identity and image, placemaking, visual culture and photography. Gerard is the founder of the Taste of Zeêland, culinary and cultural events on regional products, the encounters of hosts and guests, design contests on fashion and jewellery to bridge folkloristic culture and fashion with the contemporary world.



Erik van ‘t Klooster has been working as a lecturer, consultant and researcher in the field of event and tourism marketing for the past five years. While working for the Centre for Tourism Management (Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University), under the guidance of Professor Dr. Frank Go the idea of an online destination brand community emerged. In fall 2008, Erik met up with Robert Govers and Gerard van Keken to see how this idea could be implemented in practice. Now with the help of Mindz.com things really start to get moving…



Frank Go is Professor Rotterdam School of Management (RSM), Erasmus University, endorses the Placebrandz initiative, which responds to the needs of many professionals to exchange ideas and perspectives to drive the creative construction of their place brand. Prior to his present post Frank served within business faculties at universities in Canada and Hong Kong. His research focus is on marketing networks, ICT, coordination of knowledge transfer across borders, distributed learning within innovation communities. He is a visiting professor at Open University Business School, U.K., Rikkyo University, Tokyo, Japan; also serves as Academic Director of the Master of Science program, jointly presented by RSM/Hotel School The Hague. Frank Go is editor with Dr Robert Govers of the International Place Branding Yearbook to be published by Palgrave (London) in 2010, 2011 and 2012. He has also (co) authored more than 125 articles, official reports and book chapters in which his present writing focuses on the need to integrate technological, market and organizational change to support the transition management towards sustainable business and regional development. Or to paraphrase Prince Charles: a system that’s “More balanced and integrated with nature’s complexity”.

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Welcome to Placebrandz02 July 2009 - 11:12

The purpose of this website is to support place branding professionals around the world. First,...

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Brand Orange
Robert Govers - 07 July 2010 - 263x read
Although my son considers himself Flemish, his arm is increasingly covered by Dutch soccer star tattoos (available in Dutch supermarkets that offer any product imaginable in orange, which are proudly redistributed by his Dutch grandparents). It shows the place branding power of global sports. Sunday finals will be watched by at least 715 million viewers around the world (the size of the global... Read more (125 words)

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