Marketing a sense of place to tourists: A critical perspective

Sense of place is an elusive and ambiguous concept that broadly refers to how people relate to places through lived experiences. This chapter explores the growing interest in sense of place among place marketing and branding scholars. We first trace the trajectory of place marketing discourse from function/object towards representation/meaning and, more recently, participatory and experiential perspectives. We then discuss sense of place as a form of relation to and belonging to place. Embracing a critical marketing perspective, we argue that the production and consumption of places involve material, discursive and embodied processes. Thus, sense of place should not be seen in isolation from other elements of place such as a place’s materiality, social interactions, regulatory institutions and the systems of representations involved in the production of place meanings. Problematizing romanticized and static notions of place, which often rely exclusively on tourist imagery and needs, the chapter calls for an open, dynamic and relational sense of place. The experiences and meanings of those living and working in places are critical in this direction. The chapter concludes by drawing attention to the dialectical relationship between the material and symbolic, as well as existential and political dimensions of place. We call for a critical participatory approach to challenge notions of the past and open up possibilities for progressive change in the future.