The role of urban branding to attract foreign tourists

Abstract

In today's world, Abstract City-marketing and urban-branding strategies play an essential role in the tourism industry. Tourism activists compete with each other to attract more tourists to their attractions. In promoting a touristic attraction, branding, both physical and spiritual aspects are crucial. Developing tourism infrastructures, built heritage, iconic architecture is essential as well as reinforcement of historical references, an attractive way of life, or cultural values. Since Certain cities are attracting all of the assets and the attention, while others are becoming more or less invisible, one of the critical prerequisites for the success of cities is their overall image, or so-called „city branding.“ In this research, we tried to investigate the urban branding of Kerman-a touristic and historical city located in the south of Iran- and its role in attracting foreign tourists toward this destination. After gathering data through library and field studies and analyzing data, we come to this result that urban branding has a crucial role in attracting foreign tourists to this town. The out coming from the subsidiary hypothesis tests showed that the six aspects of branding effects on attracting tourists. Our results could be useful for promoting Kerman tourism attractions.