On the concepts of tourist branding of small towns: the case of the Gvardeysk city, Kaliningrad region

The article suggests the possible prerequisites for the formation of territory branding of small towns of the Russian Federation using the example of the city of Gvardeisk in the Kaliningrad region. The authors analyze current concepts of geobranding in Russia, such as "Territory Rebranding", "Concept of Russian Monocities", "Marketing Concept", "Tourist View", "Artistic Culture of Cities", "Event Tourism in the Geobranding System", "Nostalgic and Multicultural Tourism", "Ecological Tourism". To reach the goal the authors solve following task: attracting investments, increasing the territory attractiveness, updating the territory in the information space, creating a clear plan of tourist and infrastructure development, creating a general information vector of territory development, activating the interest of the population to solve local problems in various spheres. The possible ways of development of this direction in small towns are marked, considering the experience of creating elements of territory branding and local history. Through the concrete example the authors analyze the historical and artistic and architectural “drivers”, contributing to the creation of the brand concept in the city of Gvardeisk. Such tools of city promotion as brandbook, tourist portal, presentation video clip, quest game, festival of creativity and their purpose in the concept are considered. In the conclusion the existing problems and possible ways of their solution are outlined, among which participation in grants competitions and the development of information infrastructure on the Internet are proposed.