“This is the last chance to experience it!” How to foster place branding through intangible heritage in less known tourism destinations.

Like it is for products or services, place branding aims at triggering positive associations with a place, like a region or a city, and at differentiating it from other competing places (Kotler & Gertner, 2002; Swain et al., 2023). Place brands are multidimensional complex constructs (Hanna & Rowley, 2011), embedding several variables such as natural resources, history, architecture, demographic features, and intangible (experiential) attributes (Hanna & Rowley, 2015). Particularly, intangible attributes represent relevant elements that differentiate places such as cities (Qiu, 2023). Literature on place branding and tourism has qualified intangible attributes of place brands as intangible cultural heritage (ICH; Cai, 2002), defined as traditions, skills, and expressions considered part of the cultural heritage of a community, including knowledge and practices concerning nature (UNESCO, 2003). Although ICH is an important attribute that differentiates place brands, it is fragile as it needs constant practice from the community to be transmitted to future generations, thus its survival can be threatened (Tan et al., 2018).