Place marketing has become an increasingly common strategy over the last 30 years for urban centres aiming to gain a competitive advantage within more competitive spatial environments (Henshaw et al., 2016). Place marketing can be defined as “the coordinated use of marketing tools supported by a shared customer-oriented philosophy, for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging urban offerings that have value for the city’s customers and the city’s community at large” (Braun, 2008, p.43). Drawing on a range of definitions, Warnaby et al., (2002) specifically defined urban place marketing to encompass three key dimensions. First, urban place marketing is the responsibility of a range of actors from public, private and voluntary sectors that collaborate in order to implement entrepreneurial activities (Warnaby et al., 2002). Second, urban place marketing is concerned with ascertaining and meeting the needs and expectations of a range of users and potential users of the urban place (Warnaby et al., 2002). Finally, urban place marketing involves the commodification of selected attributes of the urban place in order to promote a positive image of the place as a holistic entity (Warnaby et al., 2002). According to Madsen (1992), place marketing strategies and activities must be directed towards specific place user groups in order to better ensure commercial success.
Additionally, it is important that place marketers understand the attractiveness of their place compared with others from a place user’s point of view (Skinner, 2008).
Researchers have conceptualised three levels of urban place marketing: (1) individual urban goods and services, (2) clusters of related services, and (3) the urban
19 | P a g e agglomeration as a whole. In the first level, marketing is concerned with the marketing of one facility, service or attraction and the marketing strategy is planned and implemented by those responsible for their management (Warnaby et al., 2005; Van den Berg and Braun, 1999). The second category comprises several related individual urban goods and services (e.g. urban tourism and retail facilities) that comprise of the first level elements (Warnaby et al., 2005; Van den Berg and Braun, 1999). The third and final level is concerned with the urban agglomeration as a whole and focuses on identity and image-building, specifically the combination of individual goods, services, and clusters that may be promoted to distinct target segments that associate with the city’s image (Warnaby et al., 2005; Van den Berg and Braun, 1999; Ashworth and Voogd, 1990). Warnaby et al., (2005) argued that the entire retail provision within the traditional centres of urban areas could be considered as one of the ‘clusters’ of related attributes/services. As such, retailing will interact with other place product elements (e.g. facilities, services, attractions etc.) to produce a ‘holistic’ place product that customers perceive to be greater than the sum in parts (Warnaby et al., 2005).
Although the marketing of urban places has been practiced since the nineteenth century (Ward, 1998), urban places have since found themselves in an increasingly competitive environment and the importance and intensity of this activity has since increased (Warnaby et al., 2002). Nowadays, urban management must be conducted in a more strategic, competitive and market-oriented approach and be able to respond to the trend for increasing competition and interdependence between the cities that derive from the globalised economy (Deffner and Liouris, 2005). Indeed, the marketing of towns and cities is a challenge in terms of creativity and ideas, but it is also an organisational challenge, meaning that cities need to invest more in the human resources than most of them have (van den Berg and Braun, 1999). Cities also need to be competitive at national and international level, which puts high demand on urban management and causes cities and towns to implement marketing as a weapon against competition (van den Berg and Braun, 1999). Furthermore, urban place marketing is considered an element of urban policy (van den Berg and Braun, 1999), and is practised in a range of contexts including geography, architecture (e.g. Najafi and Shariff, 2011; Castello, 2006) and tourism (e.g. Lew, 2017;
Smith, 2014).
20 | P a g e 2.2.3 Place Marketing in a Tourism Context
In the tourism literature, studies have focused on tourism place-making (e.g. Hultman and Hall, 2012), place branding in tourism (e.g. Alexander, Teller, and Wood, 2019; Almeyda-ibáñez and George, 2017), the emotional dimension of rural tourism experiences (e.g.
Jepson and Sharpley, 2015), the contribution of the physical environment to sense of place (e.g. Stedman, 2011), sense of place and tourism business development (e.g. Liu and Cheung, 2016) and tourism/destination marketing (e.g. Pike and Ives, 2018;
Bramwell and Rawding, 1996). The marketing and management of destinations is also a key field of academic study and an important issue in the tourism industry (Sammy, Robinson, and Oriade, 2017). Destination marketing is an important topic of research in leisure tourism (Wang and Pizam, 2011) and a substantial number of studies have emerged in this area (e.g. Nagai et al., 2018; Sheehan et al., 2016; Torres, 2015).
Central to the marketing of regional tourism is Destination Management Organisations (DMOs), which were initially formed over a century ago to maximise the economic impact of visitors to a specific area (Pouder et al., 2018; McCamley et al., 2012). DMOs can be defined as the organisation responsible for the coordination of the complex tourism industry and command the support for all key sectors and actors in the tourism system (Nagai et al., 2018; Ritchie and Crouch, 2003). Accordingly, the ultimate role of a DMO is to enhance the long-term competitiveness of a destination and in order to develop a competitive advantage and sustainable long-term tourism growth, the city’s urban tourism strategy must incorporate plans to develop local attractions, activities, and infrastructure elements (Xu and Zhang, 2016; Cooper et al., 2008). Their marketing activities encompass a wide range of planned events that enhance visitors’ experience with the goal of supporting the long-term economic development of communities through increased visitor spending while enhancing the well-being of residents (Pouder et al., 2018; Bornhorst et al., 2010).
However, strategic marketing and management in tourism is complicated due to the complex nature of the tourism industry given that it consists of both public and private sector companies, provides a variety of goods and services, and is quite fragmented (McCamley et al., 2012; Gilmore, 2003). Therefore, marketing management requires the
21 | P a g e collaboration of public, private, and local community organisations to work together and generate a management approach in order to implement the right marketing strategy for the destination to remain competitive (Nagai et al., 2018; Torres, 2015; Gilmore and Simmons, 2007). Researchers have argued that DMOs’ ability to manage a destination largely influences the destination’s sustainability and competitiveness (e.g. Ritchie and Crouch, 2003; Volgger and Pachlaner, 2014).
However, the legitimacy and effectiveness of DMOs in contemporary society has been criticized due to their limited ability to reinvent themselves in response to radical social, technological (including the rapid growth of online media technologies), economic, and political transformations that are occurring in the external environment (Sheehan et al., 2016; Dredge, 2016a, 2016b; Hall and Veer, 2016; Munar, 2016; Reinhold, Laesser, and Beritelli, 2015). Therefore, this presses the need for DMOs to develop a more strategic approach supported by knowledge acquisition and knowledge management capabilities (Sheehan et al., 2016). Indeed, the functional aspects of a tourist destination are no longer sufficient to attract visitors (Hanna and Rowley, 2019), therefore, it is important that DMOs capitalise on and communicate the emotional attributes of their destination, which are key to building relationship between the destination/place and visitors (Hultman et al., 2015).
In light of increased global competition, destinations have turned towards branding and marketing strategies (Zavattaro et al., 2015). It has become important for brand managers to have accurate evaluations of their success to better align usually limited resources with practices that can increase tourism to a destination (Jacobsen and Munar, 2012; Zenker and Martin, 2011).