Comparative Analysis Of Historic City Branding In Romania. Case Study: Baia Mare, Alba Iulia And Sibiu

The image that a city manages to create through its brand can be a major asset in the competitive struggle to attract investment, resources and tourists. Building a city brand is an extremely complex activity that requires expertise in a wide variety of fields: culture, sociology, management, psychology, economy, etc. This study focuses on analysing the tools used to create a city brand for the following historic cities: Baia Mare, Alba Iulia and Sibiu. Also, the accommodation structures, their capacity, the number of arrivals and overnight stays were analyzed and the entire tourist infrastructure has been analyzed in its dynamics, using the databases provided by the National Institute of Statistics. The results were synthesized in numerous tables in order to facilitate a comparative analysis.The last part of the study includes a series of viable recommendations based on the brand elements identified for the cities undergoing this analysis, which could represent some important means for capitalizing on the strategic potential of creating a city brand in Romania, in order for the Romanian historical cities to cope with the competition of other European historic cities.