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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the problem of place brand architecture. Despite being a well-established research domain in the field of product and services marketing, brand architecture remains an under-explored phenomenon in relation to places. The paper aims to discuss a new approach to a sub-brands strategy that builds on both the supply and the demand sides, and explores the benefits and challenges of the suggested strategy.

This paper is based on a case study of St Petersburg, Russia, using both secondary and primary data. The primary data consists of in-depth interviews with stakeholders involved in city branding and applies thematic analysis.

The results demonstrate that place brand architecture helps to design a differentiated system of sub-brands that are customer-focused and reflect the complexity of a place. The paper outlines the benefits (such as, flexibility of the sub-brands strategy and the increased credibility of the brand) and the challenges for strategy implementation (such as, higher promotional expenditure and communication risk and stakeholder misalignment).

This paper will be helpful for place brand and tourism managers who seek to attract new target groups and avoid various problems, such as the overcrowding of popular sights.

While the existing literature on place brand architecture is mainly approached from a geographical perspective, this paper proposes a new target-group-specific approach that incorporates the supply and demand sides.

This paper aims to display the role of hotel restaurants in gastronomic place branding. The authors view hotel restaurants as having a great potential in the promotion of local gastronomy.

The research was done in several stages. First, the authors selected six destinations (Lapland, Catalonia, Saint Petersburg, Marseille, Parma and Munich) according to the classification of gastronomic brands based on the settlement type. Second, the authors studied conceptions of hotel restaurants located in these destinations to see how they reflect local gastronomic brands. For this purpose, restaurant menus, verbal descriptions of interiors and names of establishments were analyzed using elements of content analysis. Finally, the authors conducted several interviews with hotel managers in one of the destinations to distinguish the challenges of gastronomic branding within hotel restaurants.

The results allowed defining the role of hotel restaurants in gastronomic branding depending on the following factors: hotel’s affiliation with a chain, hotel’s star rating and destination type.

The authors argue that gastronomic branding raises attractiveness of hotels, its restaurants and destination on the whole. This research was presented to the Tourism Committee of St Petersburg, resulting in increased attention to gastronomic branding among the city authorities.

The role of hotel restaurants in gastronomic branding has not been studied previously. However, hotel restaurants differ from other actors of gastronomic branding due to the necessity to comply with hotel’s conception, brand and standards.