The Role of Outdoor & Nature Events in Place Branding : A case study of Destination Jönköping

Sammanfattning: As place branding becomes more significant to a city, events have become a way to attract visitors nationally and internationally. Large cities are putting on events that can attract millions of people. While the literature has excellent knowledge on events in place branding, the small city is neglected. Events that utilize nature are one of the main ways cities arrangeevents. Nature has endless potential and can provide fantastic opportunities for a city. Research is needed into small cities and how to use natural events in place branding to compete with large cities. This study aims to demonstrate and analyze outdoor/nature events' role in place branding. The study also aims to research this in the context of a small city, as the literature has a heavy bias towards large cities in place branding and even more so with events in place branding. The method used in this paper is a qualitative case study methodology since we wanted to investigate Destination Jönköping’s work with place branding thoroughly. Furthermore,direct observations and document analysis were made to build the analysis. The results of our study show that Destination Jönköping extensively uses Nature events in place branding in order to deal with a lack of resources as a small city. While nature events are used by all cities in place branding efforts, small cities have a more significant benefit as they have difficulty competing with large cities in large-scale indoor and city events.