Analysis of Ekaterinburg’s city branding through the prism of tourist flows

Urban branding has become a key instrument of spatial development and of competition among cities for tourist, investment and human resources. For large industrial centres such as Yekaterinburg, the challenge of aligning historical and cultural identity, business functions and tourist attractiveness is particularly acute. The purpose of this article is to analyse how the dynamics of tourist flows in 2020–2025 reflect the outcomes of Yekaterinburg’s urban branding strategies and to what extent changes in the structure of inbound tourism correlate with the content of the city brand. The study considers the aggregate tourist flows including trips made by residents of other regions of the Russian Federation and by foreign visitors. The analysis is based on open statistical data, official communications of regional authorities and aggregated information from tourism platforms for the period 2020–2025. To substantiate the findings, the research applies dynamic, comparative and structural analysis as well as elements of an index-based approach. Special attention is paid to the proportion between business, event and recreational tourism, to shifts in the geography of tourist origins, and to the impact of major city-level events, particularly the tercentenary celebrations of Yekaterinburg and the development of congress and exhibition activities. The results demonstrate that in 2020–2025 Yekaterinburg experienced a steady increase in the number of tourists after the shock of the pandemic period, with domestic tourism acting as the main driver of growth. The share of foreign visitors remained modest; however, following the introduction of electronic visas and the expansion of flight routes, an increase in incoming tourists from Asian and Middle Eastern countries was observed. The study shows that the Yekaterinburg city brand has managed to consolidate associations of a “third capital” and a centre of business, event and industrial tourism, while the potential of emotional and cultural positioning has not yet been fully exploited. The article concludes that it is necessary to move from one-off event-based impulses to a sustainable model of brand management built on continuous work with key target segments and on long-term monitoring of tourist flows.