The importance of branding in tourism: the case of the regional entity of Tourism in Porto and Northern of Portugal

In the last few decades, branding is an important part of marketing tourism destinations. Tourist destinations started to be seen as companies and started to use the brand as a way to attract and retain visitors. The brand is based on a perspective of value creation acting as a differentiation strategy in an increasingly competitive market. In this context, this study presented here sought to understand how the regional entity of Tourism in Porto and Northern Portugal has developed its marketing through branding. In methodological terms, in a first part, there is an analysis of the literature on the concept of brands, and in a second part, the strategies adopted by the target entity of our study were analysed. As main conclusions, it was found that this entity sought to create its own brand, aggregating all anchor strategic products and complementary products, from its sub-regions with a view to promoting its natural and heritage resources, and to convey the idea of a glam-orousa cosmopolitan destination with history and tradition.