ABSTRACT
There has been a growing interest during the 1980s and 1990s in placemarketing and promotion (Gold and Ward, 1993; Kotler, Haider and Rein, 1993) based on the fonnulation of appropriate place-images to sell cities as urban tourism destinations. Yet this interest is not new, since the promotion and advertising of cities as leisure environments for tourists can be dated to at least the nineteenth century (Brown, 1985). Place-marketing is now recognised as a vital process in facilitating the development of urban tourism (Ashworth and Voogd, 1990) since it assists in recognising how "many urban activities operate in some kind of market ... in which a planned action implies an explicit and simultaneous consideration of both the supply-side and the demand-side" (Ashworth and Voogd, 1990: 65) of tourism and the way in which cities are managed as visitor destinations (Page, 1995). In other words, place-marketing requires the public and private sector to consider the market context and competitive position of cities as tourism destinations supply of attractions, facilities and activities available in the destination.
