Support of religious tourism as a practical tool of place branding (on the example of Leningrad region)

Territory branding has been widely spread recently and attracted attention numerous researchers who want to look insight its content composition, methodology and practice of its system usage. The purpose of this article is to show opportunities for religious tourism, to build the brand in the region, to identify problem areas of branding in the region, to chart the future directions of its development. Analysis of the opportunities for religious tourism showed, what we have to learn today is how to manipulate tourists’ impressions. We need to publish and circulate a lot of free brochures about history and legends of the region, maps and guidebooks to places of religious and cultural event tourism; to organize a tourist transport service system with the help of transport maps, etc. The author believes that to manage marketing of the territory affectively, a planning group should be created in each municipality which will include state, regional, municipal officials, external consultants and representatives of local businesses. Cooperative work of the government and business in planning development and promotion of a territory can be the key to future success of the state and private partnership which is being so much spoken about nowadays.