On March 29-30, by the invitation of the State Tourism Committee of the Ministry of Economic Development and investments of RA, Sergey Stanovkin, head of BBC regional representative of offices for Armenia and several other countries visited Armenia.

With assistance of Development Foundation of Armenia and Office of the World Bank in Armenia Sergey Stanovkin held a two-day seminar in Yerevan entitled "Strategic Communication and Tourism Brand".

The representatives from state bodies and private sector of tourism industry, as well as mass media attended the seminar.

The topics of the seminar were: "International competitiveness and branding", "News don’t have content", "How to quickly and correctly respond to events", "The role of brand hasn’t been so high in brand building", "Brand and tools of development".

Stanovkin presented the significance of tourism in detail and steps necessary for its development. According to him, it is very important to design strategic communication; however it must be done in way that it is interesting for a target audience. In his view, the best period for communication and advertising can be the holiday months of people, because that’s when people get more interested in news. “Brand is an image, which is formed through communication. It is due to communication alone that concepts are presented and tourism products are discussed. We will talk about not only how to theoretically form it, but also how to impact so that image becomes maximally attractive, recognizable and memorable. We will also speak about competitiveness, because it exists in the tourism and communication spheres”, Stanovkin said.

The seminar was organized to improve professional knowledge and working skills of appropriate specialists, as well as to study international branding experience of country, organizations and services.