Abstract:

Topic of city branding has attracted significant attention in academics fields in the past view years. As many cities tend to compete globally in attracting tourism or investment, the concept of brand strategy is increasingly being adopted from tangible products and has been applied to city development in order to improve the value of city life. City branding helps increase the status of a place as a tourist destination, housing, or business location. There are many places are primarily labeled as tourist destinations, where urban tourism is one of the promptest growing segments of the world tourism market. Tourism is a “way of seeing” where business stages visual experiences and tourists consume them visually. Focusing on the gaze brings out how the organizing sense in tourism is visual. Therefore, this paper intends to discover the essence of city branding related to tourism and the “Tourist Gaze” theory, city image, and the relationship between city image and its influence on tourist visiting decisions. Large databases were selected to search for published articles related to urban tourism. Thereafter, the retrieved articles were categorized and analyzed. Finally, a theoretical framework was provided for future studies on city branding and tourist gaze theory.