This document provides an overview of marketing strategies and considerations for different tourism sectors, including destinations, accommodations, transportation, attractions, and tour operators. It discusses key topics such as the roles of national tourism organizations in promoting destinations, positioning themes and branding, marketing facilitation strategies, and strategic marketing tasks specific to each sector. The main points are that tourism marketing must account for the unique characteristics of services, analyze the external environment, and involve strategic and tactical planning across promotion, products, pricing, and distribution.

1. Unit 8
Marketing
Tourism
Destinations

2. Unit topics
• NTOS/DMOS defined
• Destinations promotion role for NTOS
• Destinations positioning themes, branding, images
and concepts
• The marketing role for NTOS: The process
• Marketing facilitation strategies for an NTO
11/14/12

3. 3
REMEMBER THIS:
• Tourism is a service.
• Services differ from physical products,
–This needs to be taken into account
when marketing them

4. 4
CHARACTERISTICS OF TOURISM SERVICES
• Intangibility
• Heterogeneity / Variability
• Temporary ownership
• Perishability
• Inseparability

5. 5
Intangibility
• Not the physical portion (tangible) of the product
– Performance or experience rendered by the service provider to
the service consumer
• Most tourism products are a mixture of tangible
and intangible

6. 6
Inseparability
• Services are usually produced and consumed at the
same time
– Think of a restaurant meal
• This can make it difficult to separate the provider
of the service from the service itself.

7. 7
Perishability
• Services cannot be saved or stored as they expire
during the simultaneous production and
consumption process
– Aircraft seat
– Restaurant meal
– Amusement park ride

8. 8
Heterogeneity
• Standardisation
– Difficult to achieve in a people based service industry
• Quality control plays an important part
– What forms of standardization can you think of?

9. 9
Ownership
• Service customers usually only have access to or
use a facility where a service is performed
– Use of a hotel room for a holiday – you occupy the space only
and have temporary use of the facilities

10. 10
How Tourism Differs
• Tourism is more supply-led than other services
All ready have the product then research which market might be interested in
purchasing it.
– Dunedin the destination is already here who wants to visit.
• Tourism product might involve the co-operation of several
suppliers.
e.g. Package holiday
• Tourism is a complex, extended product experience with
no predictable critical evaluation point.
Pre trip anticipation and post trip reflection
While trips to the same destination may be the same different variables can
make the trip different – and hard to evaluate against

11. 11
How Tourism Differs
• Tourism is a high-involvement, high-risk product to its
consumers
– Involves committing large sums of money to something reasonably
unknown
• Tourism is a product partly constituted by the dreams and
fantasies of its customers.
– Unlike banking and car repair, tourism is not consumed for rational,
functional purposes.
• Tourism is a fragile industry susceptible to external forces
beyond the control of its suppliers
– Tourism organisations sometimes have to make rapid responses to crises in the form
of product redesign, price reductions or promotional damage limitation.

12. 12
MARKETING
DESTINATIONS

13. NTOs/DMOs Defined
A destination represents an ‘amalgam of tourism
products, offering an integrated experience to
consumers’.
• A DMO (Destination Marketing Organizations) can be
defined as ‘any organizations, at any level, which is
responsible for the marketing of an identifiable
destination’
• The term NTO (National Tourism Organizations) is
used specifically to designate the ‘entity with
overall responsibility for marketing a country as a
tourism destination’.

14. Marketing roles of NTOs and DMOs
• It can be concluded that there are two levels to
consider in marketing a country as a destinations.
>> The first level, concerned with the
destinations as a whole, is the primary focus of what
NTOs do.
>> The second level covers the marketing
activity of the mainly private sector operators
promoting their individual products.

15. Destination promotion role for NTOS
• NTOS have to choose between two alternative strategies
- A promotional strategy: reaching prospective visitors
via expenditure on a promotional mix intended to achieve
destinations awareness and influence prospective customers’
attitudes and purchasing behavior
- A facilitation strategy: concerned with exercising a
influence over the tourism industry.
11/14/12

16. A Promotional Strategy
• A promotional strategy means devising and implementing
promotional and integrated communications programs, and
targeting potential visitors segments with branding, images
and key messages.
• The objectives are typically to make customers aware,
motivate their interest, encourage them to surf the
internet, send for product brochures, call direct or go to
travel agents in their area.
11/14/12

17. A Facilitation Strategy
• An alternative strategy, relevant to DMO’s
• Facilitation creates marketing collaboration and networking bridges
between a DMO and individual operators in the travel and tourism
industry.
• Facilitation strategy requires extensive co-operation and joint
decision-making with private sector partners. It also requires a
substantial commitment to market research and intelligence, and to
performance evaluation.
• The strategy a DMO adopts in practice should vary according to the
stage of development the destination has reached. Where
destinations are largely unknown in the markets, existing tourism
flows are small, DMO will have to play a major role in promoting its
destination’s products.

18. Destination Positioning Themes, Branding, Images and
Concepts
• DMOs always have a vital function to perform for their
destinations in choosing the single-minded communication
propositions ( messages and symbols ) that serve to identify and
position or ‘brand’ their countries in the minds of prospective
visitors, and differentiate them from all others.
➢ Amazing Thailand
➢ Incredible India
• To be successful in practice such propositions must be:
>> Based on genuine product values and attributes that can be
delivered and experienced and that visitors recognize as authentic,
not fake.

19. >> Readily understood by customers at the point of
purchase.
>> Involve at least the leading players in the commercial
sector.
>> Incorporated into the promotional efforts of a
country’s regions and resorts.
>> Sustained over several years if they are to overcome
the communication inertia and barriers.
>> Systematically exploited in a coordinated range of
sales- promotion and customer servicing techniques
designed to reach visitors on arrival at the destination as
well as prospective visitors in countries of origin.

20. The main stages in destination marketing
process for NTOs
• Researching the external business environment
• Government policy and tourism strategy
• Marketing planning
• Marketing objectives and targets
• Budget decisions
• Internet developments
11/14/12

21. Marketing Facilitation Strategies for an NTO
The most important facilitation processes used by NTOs
around the world:
• Flow of research data and marketing intelligence
• Representation in markets of origin
• Organization of workshops and trade shows
• Familiarization trips
• Travel trade manuals

22. • Support with literature production and
distribution
• Participation in joint marketing schemes or
ventures
• Information and reservation systems
• Support for new products
• Trade consortia
• Consumer assistance and protection
• General advisory services for the industry

23. 23
MARKETING
ACCOMMODATION

24. 24
Strategic Marketing Tasks for
Accommodation Businesses
• evaluating strategic opportunities for growth
• planning the most profitable business mix of segments,
products and price ranges having regard to yield rather than
volume
• Deciding the position, brand or image each accommodation
unit (or chain of units) should occupy.
• Internet marketing
• Encouraging and regrading frequent users (relationship
marketing)
• Developing marketing integration between units inc common
ownership (chains) or units in individual ownership (coops)

25. 25
MARKETING
TRANSPORTATION

26. 26
Passenger Transport Respond to 7 specific
external factors which operators have limited
control and influence
• vehicle technology (major innovations)
• Information and communication technology
• regulatory framework
• price of fuel
• economic growth or decline (national and internationa
tech)
• exchange rate fluctuations
• environmental issues
26

27. 27
MARKETING
ATTRACTION

28. 28
Marketing strategies for Attractions
The primary task of marketing managers if to
monitor and interpret the factors in the changing
external environment that influence strategy.
• Actions of competitors
• Customer sophistication
• ICT Developments
• More sustainable approaches to managing resources
28

29. 29
MARKETING
FOR
TOUR OPERATORS

30. 30
Marketing strategies tour operators
Marketing tasks are divided into strategic and tactical
considerations. Most tour operators enter a “boom and
bust” atmosphere. The five elements are:
• interpreting the strength and direction of change in the
external environment.
• strategic decisions on volume and pricing
• Choice of product/customer portfolio
• positioning and image
• Choice and maintenance of distribution system/preferred
marketing method.
30