CITY BRANDING AND ITS ECONOMIC IMPACTS ON TOURISM

Abstract. Economic competition of cities from the point of view of tourism, trade and investments is becoming very intensive as the world economy goes global. Certain cities are attracting all of the assets and the attention, while others are becoming more or less invisible. One of the key prerequisities for the success of cities is their overall image, or so-called "city branding". The perception of the city affects its attractiveness to tourists, foreign investors or potential students. Marketing experts are trying to brand or re-brand cities in order to create a community where people will want to live and that will be attractive for the visitors.Our paper analyzes different approaches to city branding based on empirical statistical data analysis for assessing the relationship between quality of the city brand and average price of hotels in the city. Our results yielded a positive relationship between the value of the cities' brands and the hotel prices in the cities, although the scope is not as big as in the case of the Saffron barometer. Our findings can be explained by the differing concepts of the used indexes: while CBI is more general and includes economic, education and infrastructure aspects, the Saffron barometer is much more tourism-related.Keywords: tourism, city branding, marketing, international trade, regional development, economic growthJEL Classification: L83, M31, R11IntroductionTourism represents a relatively steady and fast-growing sector of the world economy. However, the dynamics of its growth has been uneven depending on the specific tourist region of the world. More tourism-oriented and tourism-advanced destinations that dominated international tourism in the second half of the last century are now experiencing the effects of the slowdown in economic growth as well as population aging (see e.g. Chiabai et al., 2014). New demand for tourism services is increasing specifically in developing regions. The competition between not only countries, but also between cities, is becoming more intense. Certain cities are attracting all the attention ofpotential tourists, while others are becoming more invisible in their eyes and are losing their attractiveness as tourist destinations.Current development in the international tourism market and growing public investments in destination marketing are adding up to the importance of the process of city and country branding. The perception of the city affects its attractiveness to tourists and foreign investors, and also to potential foreign students or local residents. The overall image of the city can be stimulated through a variety of marketing activities (Strielkowski, 2013). Thence, numerous marketing experts are trying to brand or re-brand cities in order to create a community where people will want to live and that is attractive for the visitors.The aim of this paper is to examine different methodological approaches to city branding and based on the analysis of statistical data, to assess the relationship between the quality of city branding and average price of hotels offered in the city.In addition, our paper describes a possible methodological approach to city branding - e.g. the way to explore how the strong city brands market themselves, which characteristics they possess and what the city marketers need to do to create strong brands. To quantify relationships between the city brand and price of hotels a regression and correlation coefficient is utilized which is based on secondary statistical data. Our data are drawn mainly from the following sources: European City Brand Barometer from company Saffron Consultant Group, Anholt GfK-Roper City Brand Index a Hotel Price Index.1. Theoretical Approaches to City BrandingAt the theoretical level, a concept of branding is typically developed as a response to changes in the status and role of tourism in the global environment. Nowadays, this concept becomes a subject of numerous studies, analyses and rankings of international institutions. …