Media And Branding Strategies in Cultural Tourism. The Case of the Region of Moldavia

Abstract

The present article analyses the increasingly important role played by cultural tourism seen as a dynamic sector of global tourism and the impact of branding strategies in the development of tourism at a regional level. The aim of the research is to prove that cultural tourism may be a key factor in regional development given the great tourist potential of Romania, in general, and of the region under analysis, in particular. The article starts with a presentation of the factors that caused the rapid evolution of cultural tourism and its ‘expansion into the everyday life’ a trend that favours a shift of the tourists’ interest from the ‘iconic’ and ‘the staged inauthentic’ to the local and authentic aspects of a community’s daily life. This preference, as it is argued throughout the article, has to be exploited in the elaboration of branding strategies that have to concentrate on the promotion of Moldavia as home of a genuine and well-preserved cultural patrimony and traditional lifestyle.