Kalmars turismprofilering ur ett tidsperspektiv : En komparativ studie mellan två historiska platser

The world has become a globalized place in constant development and much of which is now taken for granted did not even exist 30-40 years ago, such as smartphones or Internet in common households. As new tourist destinations is continuously being created, it becomes increasingly important with effective place marketing to compete in the global market. Developing a good and interesting profile is thus a way for places to become more attractive for tourists. The main theory in the paper is "post-industrialization and the entrepreneurial city" which describes how cities in the global north have moved away from industry towards becoming post-industrial cities – very often with a strong focus on tourism. A review of previous research in tourism, marketing, profiling, image and branding of places have been made, whereupon a knowledge gap has been identified regarding studies concerning comparison of how the structure of places and arguably also the profiling of places has changed over time. The aim of this paper is therefore to examine how the Swedish city of Kalmar's profiling and geographical space has changed from 1972-82 compared to 2010-14. In order to do so, interviews have been conducted and written material have been analysed. The result demonstrates inter alia that Kalmar, like many other post-industrial cities, has gone from being an industrial city to a place of tourism