FORMING AND PROMOTING A REGIONAL IMAGE, RETHINKING DESTINATION MARKETING AND BRANDING, AND MOVING BEYOND CONCEPTUAL CONFUSION.

There is no consensus in the scientific literature on place promotion, place marketing and image, and place branding in practice as to the content of these three concepts and through what types of policies they can be implemented. Although a number of theoretical approaches and definitions have been proposed by scholars, both scholars and practitioners (consultants, civil servants, public and private stakeholders, and policymakers) often apply these concepts in an equal sense. This article argues that recent developments in theory and practice regarding territorial promotion, regional marketing, and regional branding provide an important opportunity to eliminate this conceptual confusion.