Place Marketing Implementation in Different Administrative Subdivisions: Estonian Case Study

Abstract

The principal scope of this paper is to construct the chain-of-marketing that regards the implementation of a place marketing strategy, in particular regional tourism and development policy. For a few decades place marketing has been mostly a marketing viewpoint for urban areas in the context of tourism in cities or metropols. Smaller rural areas and country-sides have not got so much attention and place marketing is not much used as a strategic tool to improve development in such areas. Place marketing is usually seen as a tourism improvement for tourists, but actually the target audience is much wider. The starting point of the paper was the assumption that the quality of place marketing in these rural areas is not good and strategically elaborated. By comparing three different case studies, Tartu Rural Development Association (Example 1), 4P area in Central-Estonia (Example 2) and Attractions in Municipality of Konguta (Example 3), worst and best practices have been identified, and an answer to the question whether there exists such a thing as ideally sized and structured geographical area that deals with place marketing on the regional level has been sought