Place branding gathering momentum

The articles included in this Special Issue were presented at the Inaugural Conference of the International Place Branding Association, which was hosted by Middlesex University in London in December 2016. The conference gathered a great number of scholars, researchers, practitioners and PhD students all working on place branding and related issues. During the one day of the PhD Colloquium and the two days of the main conference, the delegates’ interest in several aspects of place and destination branding encouraged intense discussions ranging from light-hearted but creative conversations to serious but inspiring disagreements. The programme included three relevant and effective keynote speeches: an ‘academic’ one by P.O. Berg (from Stockholm Business School), a ‘consultancy’ one by Bill Baker and and a ‘practitioner’ one by Marit Høvik Hartmann (from the city of Oslo). A series of topics, ideas, methods and examples from all over the world were examined at the conference’s five strands of presentations. As the inaugural conference of the IPBA, the conference provided the perfect opportunity to address several pressing questions around place branding