An evaluation of place marketing for tourism within selected British industrial cities.

This research investigates the decision-making processes and objectives of tourism marketing organisations in the marketing of industrial cities for tourism, as part of their urban regeneration. The local authorities of these industrial cities have started to adopt a marketing orientation to some of their activities, as they are becoming increasingly aware that they are competing with each other for resources such as tourists, business locators and residents in order to regenerate their economies. They are therefore marketing themselves and projecting favourable place images. This study examines in detail the importance of place image in the tourism marketing process, as the marketing of a city for tourism is thought to be able to improve the often negative images of these industrial cities.A review of the literature reveals that no writers have examined the objectives behind cities choosing tourism as a catalyst for urban regeneration; and virtually no research has investigated the creation of tourism images, the types of images projected in promotional material, and the tourism marketing organisations responsible for marketing industrial cities for tourism.The research made use of qualitative research methods as these were felt to be appropriate for the nature of the study. A large study was carried out, examining the promotional material from sixty industrial towns and cities for the projection of place images. A case study approach was used to examine the specific situation that existed for tourism marketing in five industrial cities and this involved the interviewing of tourism marketing professionals in these cities.The results indicate that the five cities had adopted similar approaches to the use of tourism'marketing for urban regeneration, but varied in their emphasis of the objectives and in their organisational structure for tourism marketing. The large study showed that the sixty places projected similar, broad images to one another in their promotional material, but emphasised different aspects of this similar image. The five case study cities had different approaches to the process of image creation, but again promoted similar broad city images and emphasised different aspects of this city image from each other. Issues arising from the research are that in the future cities may adopt broader place marketing objectives and promote broader place images, and this will have implications for the role of tourism marketing. It seems that places have similar tourism marketing objectives, so will they promote similar tourism products? Places already promote similar tourism images, so how can they differentiate these images? It appears that official agencies responsible for marketing cities need a better understanding of place image and place marketing.