Tourism as an Aspect of City Branding in Functional Urban Areas

Abstract

Functional Urban Areas (FUAs) are among the main actors of local development planning in the current perspective of the European Union. One of significant challenges in the management of such areas is the creation of an image or building of a city brand covering several neighboring municipalities. Among other things, tourist attractions can be used as important factors in defining metropolitan identity. The aim of the paper is to identify categories of tourist attractions that are used in the process of communicating FUAs’ brands. The paper is focused on branding activities related to the tourism of selected FUAs in Poland. The research method involved a content analysis of documents entitled Strategies of Integrated Territorial Investments (ITI) developed for Polish FUAs. Research results show that branding activities of FUAs aimed at developing their tourism function are more material- than immaterial-oriented and concern only those issues that are dependent on local government authorities and not tourism companies. The paper contributes to the development of the city branding theory focusing on the issue of developing a tourist brand for FUAs. The key limitations of the paper are as follows: it is based on the analysis just one type of documents – ITI Strategies of Polish FUAs – and the specificity of content analysis as a research method.