Place branding is a process of developing and promoting place identity that will promote positive feelings about the place and create images, associations, and feelings in targeted place audiences. The place brand should stand out from place brands of other places. Good place branding enhances the place’s reputation which results in good business performance.

Tourism is one of the major types of businesses that are influenced by place branding. Place branding is also known as “reputation management” which revolves around creating perceptions about a certain place, managing these perceptions to determine how they develop over time, and finally determining how to translate these into positive outcomes for the people or product associated with it. It can be said that the whole idea of place branding is to create or enhance the identity of a certain place or product.

Place branding is used by marketers, public relations experts, and commercial developers to convey useful information about a given location while also creating positive feelings about it. This strategy can be very effective in terms of promoting destinations for tourism purposes as well as encouraging business investments.

Place branding is about creating positive images in minds of the audience so that they would perceive the place positively. The main goal is to convey the right image of the place, which also includes differentiating it from others. Branding should be high on the strategic agenda for countries and places because it helps in developing economies through investment attraction, tourism promotion, and employment creation. Countries and places can use place branding for communication purposes to create the right perception in the minds of people.

Place branding is also about the promotion of a specific place, including tourism. The focus should be on how to attract tourists and to convince them that they should spend their vacations in that particular place or country.

How does Soft Power affect the development of Place Brands?

Soft power is the ability to influence others through attraction rather than coercion or payments. Soft power resources are the assets that produce such attraction-a country’s culture, political values, and foreign policies. Soft power can help to develop place brands. Soft power is a prime factor in determining the ‘external’ agenda of any nation.