TOURISM MARKETING ZLATINA KARADZHOVA In its broadest sense

TOURISM MARKETING ZLATINA KARADZHOVA

In its broadest sense, tourism marketing is the business discipline of attracting visitors to a specific location. Hotels, cities, states, consumer attractions, convention centers and other sites and locations associated with consumer and business travel all apply basic marketing strategies to specific techniques designed to increase visits.

Tourism Marketing Plan Every marketing effort should begin with a plan, and tourism marketing is no different. The marketing plan is your road map and details the attractions in your area. It forces you to set a budget on your promotional spending. At the end of each tourism season, you can use your marketing plan to set goals and make changes for next year. For example, if revenue at one attraction did not meet expectations, perhaps it needs product development -some upgrades to make it more appealing to visitors -- or better advertising.

Partnerships Tourism marketing can be expensive, particularly if you want to attract national or international tourists. Typical funding sources are state tourism agencies and taxes, including hotel taxes. To stretch tourism dollars, public/private partnerships often form among local and regional businesses and chambers of commerce. For example, if there are several tourist attractions in a specific county or across several neighboring counties the entire area can be marketed as an appealing weeklong destination site by combining advertising and other marketing activities. Partnerships can provide tourists with a fuller travel experience.

Characteristics Tourism marketing has distinct characteristics from other marketing plans. Because tourists are temporary, they are exposed to an area's goods and services for shorter periods. But tourists are counting on having a good time, so marketers should consider strategies that appeal to the emotions, such as treating kids to a memorable experience. Tourism-dependent businesses rely on other organizations: One example of leveraging this dependence would be a musical venue offering discount coupons for meals at a nearby restaurant.

In many cases, tourism marketing centers on attracting people to a specific location without recommending specific sites or accommodations. For some locations, the attractions are so well -known, the tourism marketer simply needs to remind consumers that the area offers a good time. Las Vegas, for example, uses the slogan, “What Happens In Vegas, Stays in Vegas”. Florida takes a more benefitoriented tack, marketing itself as “The Sunshine State” promising an attractive climate to those who want a beach, golf or other warm-weather vacation.

The 8 Ps Basic marketing addresses four pillars of creating and selling a product or service: product, price, place and promotion. In tourism marketing, the four Ps are often applied in the following ways: Product Tourism marketing includes determining the unique selling benefit or benefits one area has over its competition. A destination might offer people looking to combine business and pleasure ease of travel to and from the area, ample convention halls and hotels, interesting nightlife, and activities for adult partners and children.

Integrated marketing communications (IMC) involves planning and coordinating all the promotional mix elements (including online and social media components) to be as consistent and mutually supportive as possible. This approach is much superior to using each element separately and independently.

Tour operators, attractions, hotels, and destination marketing organizations will often break down marketing into separate departments, losing the opportunity to ensure each activity is aligned with a common goal. Sometimes a potential visitor or guest is bombarded with messaging about independent destinations within a region, or businesses within a city, rather than one consistent set of messages about the core attributes of that destination.

Price When trying to attract tourists, locales often use discounts, loss leaders and bundling to draw visitors. For example, a local chamber of commerce might solicit money from local businesses to hold a free concert, sporting event or festival that generates hotel stays, restaurant visits and other consumer spending. A hotel might offer discount coupons to a local restaurant. The restaurant gets free referral marketing, while the hotel offers a value-added service to its guests. Some hotels and resorts offer guests free shuttle service. Tourist centers carefully analyze tourism trends and raise and lower their prices based on a busy or “high” season and an off-season, and based on what their competitors are offering, to maximize occupancy rates.

Place The “place” in the four Ps refers to where a business distributes its product or service, such as in a store, online, using catalogs or through wholesalers. In tourism sales, location and destination marketers sell through tour operators, travel agents, inside sales teams and by setting up websites and phone operators to handle incoming inquiries. Spring break cities are well known for working with packaged vacation tour companies that bring college students to specific hotels by the busload. Destinations often offer free “site visits” to meeting planners, providing free rooms at different hotels, meals, golf, tennis and guided tours to vetted business professionals who select the location of meetings, seminars, retreats, conventions and trade shows.

Promotion Tourism marketing uses a wide variety of communications strategies and techniques to promote areas and destinations. A convention center might purchase advertisements in trade magazines for meeting planners and send direct mail materials to corporations that hold events. They might place ads in tennis or golf magazines to attract those consumers. Destinations build websites and place ads in consumer publications read by their target customers. Chambers of commerce are involved in promoting their areas generally and the businesses within their areas specifically. This often includes offering potential visitors packets filled with brochures, discount coupons and other materials.

People: developing human resources plans and strategies to support positive interactions between hosts and guests Programming: customer-oriented activities (special events, festivals, or special activities) designed to increase customer spending or length of stay, or to add to the appeal of packages Partnership: also known as cooperative marketing, increasing the reach and impact of marketing efforts Physical evidence: ways in which businesses can demonstrate their marketing claims and customers can document their experience such as stories, reviews, blog posts, or in-location signage and components

It’s important to consider how consumers use various and multiple channels of communication and reach out to them in a comprehensive and coherent fashion. As a concept, IMC is not new, but it is more challenging than ever due to the numerous social media and unconventional communication channels now available. Each channel must be well maintained and aligned around the same messages, and selected with the visitor in mind. Too often businesses and destinations deploy multiple channels and end up neglecting some of these, rather than ensuring key platforms are well maintained (Eliason, 2014). In order to better understand our guests, and the best ways to reach them, let’s take a closer look at the consumer as the starting and focal point of any marketing plan.

� Consumer Behavior in Tourism and Hospitality � Customers use their senses to see, hear, smell, and touch (and sometimes taste) to decipher messages from businesses, deciding on a product or service based on their perception of the facts rather than, at times, the actual facts. A number of factors have been shown to impact the choices the consumer makes, including personal factors, which reflect needs, wants, motivations, previous experience, and a person’s lifestyle, and interpersonal factors, such as culture, social class, family, and opinion leaders. � Perception Is Reality

� Applying Psychology to Marketing � Marketers may determine a degree of predictability about customer perceptions. Customers are likely to: � Screen out information that they are already familiar with � Notice and retain information to satisfy a need they are aware of (want) � Purchase services that reflect the image they perceive themselves to project � Notice and retain things out of the norm � Attach credibility to personal information rather than commercially generated information

� Customers are less likely to: � Use perceptual biases to distort information received on an interpersonal basis � Absorb complicated information that requires effort to comprehend � Notice and retain information about a competitive service or product if they are satisfied with another brand Tourism marketers are in the business of reminding and making customers aware of their needs. Customers have to be motivated to act on satisfying their wants and needs, while marketers need to trigger the process by supplying objectives and potential motives.

Scientists identified a distinct five-step pattern for consumer decision-making. These steps are: need recognition, information search, pre-purchase evaluation, purchase, and post-purchase evaluation. Here are some critical components at each stage: Need recognition: For this process to start there needs to be a stimulus; a need must be triggered and identified. Information search: The customer begins to consult different sources of information; personal (marketer dominated) and intrapersonal (non-marketer) factors will likely be used.

Pre-purchase evaluation: After researching the choices, the customer starts to evaluate options using both objective criteria, such as price and location, and subjective criteria, such as the perceived status of the product or service. Purchase: The customer intends to buy the product or service that best matches the criteria, although he or she can still be influenced by a number of factors, such as friends and family who disagree with the purchase, or a change in personal finances. Post-purchase evaluation: After use, the customer evaluates the purchase against expectations; if these don’t match, the customer will be either dissatisfied (expectations not met) or impressed (expectations exceeded). For this reason, it’s best for hospitality and tourism providers to “under promise” and “over deliver. ”

Understanding Customer Needs � As we have discussed, service plays an important role in shaping customer impressions, where the ultimate goal of a tourism or hospitality business is to exceed expectations. Every customer has different wants and needs, but virtually all customers expect the following basic needs to be taken care of: � Quality � Value � Convenience � Good service � To fully satisfy customers, businesses must deliver in all four areas. If they meet the basic needs listed above, they’ll create a passive customer — one who is satisfied, but not likely to write a review or mention a business to others. � �

Tourism marketers in BC need to monitor trends in the following areas that may impact the success of their marketing efforts: � Demographic shifts (aging population, the rise of millennials), and socioeconomics (cultural changes, economic decline/growth) � Political, economic, and geographic changes (emerging or declining economies) � Trip purpose (growth of multipurpose trips) � Psychographic changes (special interests, healthy lifestyles, sustainability) � Behavioral adaptations (free independent travel, decreasing brand loyalty) � Product-related trends (emerging niches) � Distribution channels (online travel agencies, virtual travel) �

Conclusion Effective services marketing in the tourism and hospitality sector requires marketers to gain a solid understanding of the differences between the marketing of goods and services. Successful organizations use market research to learn the preferences and behaviors of key customer segments. Through a strategic planning process, organizations and destinations develop a marketing orientation designed to identify customer needs and trigger their wants, while striving to meet organizational objectives. Activities are designed to support integrated marketing communications across multiple platforms with reciprocal communications — that is, not just broadcasting information, but having conversations with customers. Savvy marketers will leverage these conversations to keep up with evolving customer interests while seeking an understanding of emerging trends in order to anticipate needs and wants. Engaged marketers also know that social media and integrated marketing communications must be complemented with remarkable customer service, which ultimately supports successful marketing strategy.

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