Tourism industry is a generator of economic development. For this reason, competition among the leading tourist destinations is growing. Tourists prefer recognizable destinations which are a guarantee of a high level and quality of service and are willing to pay a higher price for that. A strong destination brand is necessary to ensure successful positioning in the global tourism market and be recognizable. Kvarner recognizes the importance of tourism development and seeks to have a significant part in international tourist flows with its rich resource potential. However, Kvarner does not have a strong and recognizable brand and its resources are not transformed into attractive and distinctive tourism products. In order to assess the strength of the brand and competitiveness of the Kvarner destination, a survey was conducted among employees in tourism and persons involved in tourism development. The study was conducted according to the integrated model of destination competitiveness, the commonly used Conceptual Model of Destination Competitiveness model (Crouch and Ritchie, 2003) and Kim & Dwyer model (2003). This model was successfully applied to the case studies of Korea and Australia (Dwyer, Livaić and Mellor, 2003) and Slovenia (Gomezelj and Mihalic, 2008). The score of 85 indicators that cover various segments of the destination evaluated the strength of brand and the competitiveness of destination. They were divided into 6 main determinants of competitiveness: inherited resources, created resources, supporting resources, situational conditions, destination management and demand conditions. In order to prove the hypotheses, numerous statistical methods were used: Cronbach’s alpha, T-Test, Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test, Shapiro-Wilk test, Kruskal-Wallis test, Spearman's Rank Correlation Coefficient, Wilcoxon Rank Sum and Logistic Regression. Special attention was given to the analysis of destination brand, its relationship to Kvarner destination competitiveness, as well as to analyse the impact of destination management indicators to destination brand and image, and their interdependence. Research has shown that Kvarner has valuable resources, but is insufficiently competitive in managing them. Destination management should ensure the creation of a strong destination brand, destination competitiveness and sustainability. The Kvarner brand management model with a series of measures to improve the system was proposed.