The results show that to compete in this specific market, tourist products and packages, cultural attractions and gastronomy are the critical elements chosen to attract visitors. The final sample includes twelve official websites operated by official tourism organizations from the following cities: London, Paris, Istanbul, Barcelona, Amsterdam, Milan, Rome, Vienna, Prague, Munich, Madrid and Frankfurt. The study performs a content analysis to identify the similarities and differences of the official communication channels of the twelve most popular urban destinations in Europe. The research is part of the ITOURIST research project. It is a baseline study on the most popular destinations in the context of European urban tourism that addresses the limitations of previous studies.
On the other, the study aimed to determine the most relevant characteristics of the destinations that act as distinguishing elements. On the one hand, it sought to identify the dominant features of communication to attract visitors to Europe's most popular urban destinations. Vinyals has published the results of her study in the advanced online edition of Journal of Destination Marketing & Management. This research helps to understand how European cities use their most attractive features to compete in the market segment of urban destinations and to stand out from other competing cities. Sara Vinyals Mirabent, a researcher of the Communication, Advertising & Society (CAS) Research Group of the Department of Communication at UPF has raised the issue and has studied it at the twelve most popular urban destinations in Europe. For the brand image, the uniqueness of the destination is key to its desired positioning and this makes the brand unique and distinguishable for tourists. It is the potential to create and integrate value-added products to maintain the resources while keeping their position in the market compared with other competitors. A destination's competitiveness refers to the ability of the brand to successfully occupy a niche in the market in the long term.