'The river city'? Conflicts in the development of a tourism destination brand for Brisbane.

Abstract

This chapter draws on the political underpinnings of destination marketing and explores how the image of the Brisbane River produced a controversy that allows a better understanding of the problems that relate organic and inorganic images of a destination. While the Brisbane River flows through the city and symbolically and geographically connects many of its suburbs, the argument presented in the chapter outlines the theoretical context by which this complexity may be better understood. It then gives an empirical account of events and issues in the evolution of a river tourism policy for Brisbane, and provides an initial analysis of these.