Following the terrorist attacks of 2015, the Paris Convention & Visitors Bureau had to add to its usual B2B marketing focus with communications to reassure the consumer audience. Alice Rampelberg, Marketing B2C and E-Commerce Director at the Paris Convention & Visitors Bureau, explained how Paris have reinforced their global tourism brand as well as how collaboration with London is opening the door to more American tourists.

For the first time, the City Nation Place Global conference will be in Shoreditch, London’s ‘Silicon Roundabout’ and the third largest hub for tech start-ups in the world. With talent attraction a major focus for much of the world, we began to wonder what makes a destination the perfect incubator for successful tech start-ups. What are the magic ingredients you need in place?

New research has revealed that people are increasingly less willing to follow the money to big economic and urban centers and are instead choosing to live, work and invest in places that give them better quality of life – and in turn the money is following them.

There are just a few short days left until the City Nation Place Awards shortlist is announced for 2020! We took the opportunity to ask one of our jurors, Adam Joyce, VP of Acceleration, Calgary TELUS Convention Centre, to share a few of his thoughts around the key challenges facing place branders as we head in to the new decade.

With the new decade looming large on the horizon - and technology continuing to develop rapidly - how will place branding need to evolve to face the new challenges? Jos Vranken, Managing Director at NBTC Holland Marketing, shared a few of his predictions for the future of place branding.

In 2011, Vibe Israel began the task of igniting new conversations that would challenge the international perception that Israel was little more than a site of conflict. Before the City Nation Place Global conference, the CEO of Vibe Israel, Joanna Landau, explained to us what they mean by "bottom-up country branding" and how they worked to implement such a monumental image change.

We can all agree that tourism promotion is an essential component of a city, nation or place’s economy, right alongside a solid economic development strategy. In 2018, travel and tourism generated 10.4% of all global economy and created 319 million jobs – that works out as a global average of 1 in every 10 people whose daily income is reliant on tourism.  And yet for some reason, when the going gets get tough and budgets need to be cut, everyone seems to turn their eyes to the place promotion budget.

At the start of September, over 80 delegates representing over 25 countries across the LatAm and Caribbean region made the journey to San Jose in Costa Rica for the first City Nation Place LatAm & Caribbean conference.  It’s always such a pleasure to bring place branders together – the willingness to collaborate and share ideas defies the assumption that place branding is all about competitiveness. 

Promoting a destination can be a challenge when its overshadowed on the world stage by another city. But for Kim Heinen, International Press Officer at Rotterdam Partners, embracing your differences – and even your “quirky and ugly sides” can be the key to reaching an audience who truly appreciate your place. We caught up with Kim before the City Nation Place Global conference to get a quick sneak preview of the work that Rotterdam have been doing.

Sustainability is increasingly seen as an intrinsic element of a place brand strategy - both in terms of managing your environmental impact and the longer-term impact of policies and strategies on your community. With the deadline for the #CNPAwards approaching, we asked Leigh Dawber, Chief Marketing Officer for Cape Town Tourism, how she feels that places should work to embed a more sustainable approach into their place brand vision.

Creating your place brand strategy is complex at best - and implementing it is no easier. Given the challenges that place branders face, we asked Cat Leaver, Director at Brand Scotland to share her insights around what makes an award-winning campaign in 2019.

Creating a destination marketing or investment promotion strategy that recognises your heritage whilst establishing a clear point of difference from your neighboring destinations can be tough. It's not enough to say that you offer an 'authentic' experience - you have to be able to back your claim up. So how do you ensure that your place brand truly reflects what is unique about your place? Corinna Keller, VP Advertising Sales for the Americas, and Tini Sevak, VP Audience & Data, at CNN International, shared their insights on how places in Latin America & the Caribbean could overcome this challenge, as well as some of the opportunities that the future may hold.

The industry of travel and tourism thrives on information and data – it’s what ensures the right plane is filled with the right passengers eating the right meals going to the right destination with the right baggage ending up in the right hotel room. Today, there are over 1.4 billion tourists travelling worldwide to more destinations and places. With accessibility and proliferation comes greater demand - travellers want more than ever before; we want speed, authenticity, security – we want it all and, crucially, we want it now.

New Zealand have one of the most admired place brands in the world. But what goes on behind the brand? Rebecca Smith, Director of the New Zealand Story, shared some of New Zealand's key areas of focus with us before she delivers our international keynote at City Nation Place Latin America & the Caribbean.

Following the dissolution of Mexico's Tourism Promotion council, the private sector of Los Cabos stepped into fill the gap. Rodrigo Esponda, Managing Director of the Los Cabos Tourism Board, shared details of the collaboration with us, along with the work that they're undertaking to challenge negative stereotypes in the media.