meaning of tourism marketing wikipedia

Tourism Marketing

Travel and tourism marketing is the systematic and coordinated execution of business policies by the both private or public and public sector tourism organizations operating at the local, regional, national, or international level to achieve the optimal satisfaction of the needs of identifiable tourist groups, and in doing so to achieve an appropriate return .

Travel agencies in the pre-deregulation, pre-liberalization, and pre-globalization era were often contended to take whatever business that come along this way and sold them on a straight commission basis without bothering about the extensive marketing. Moreover, their scope of the operation was small and was not much complex, sophisticated and competitive.

But today the travel companies are becoming larger, more sophisticated and more automated in management.  Similarly, the clients/tourists are also becoming more trained, experienced, erudite and demanding higher quality services and packages.

Therefore, in this volatile travel business environment, marketing knowledge and skill are more necessary ingredients than the product knowledge and enthusiasm, for a travel agency’s long-term survival and growth. Thus, this has led to the use of tourism marketing which is recent phenomena.

History of Tourism Marketing

The ‘ marketing concept ‘ is not very old. I came into the scene in the 2nd half of the 20th century. In the beginning, it was linked with the number of closely associated factors for achieving volume sales.

The development of the marketing concept, in fact, is the outcome of political, technological, social, economic and business pressures. However, the importance of marketing within travel and tourism industry has been the level of economic and business growth throughout the 20th century, which has led to the improvement in living standards, an enlargement of the population and an increase in discretionary income and time.

These changes have also led to the construction of infrastructure, accommodation, transport , and other recreational facilities. Within a very short period, travel and tourism have become one of the most important and leading industry in the world.

Modern tourism marketing has evolved as a business reaction to changes in the Socio-Economic environment, with the most successful tourism companies or tourism bodies have demonstrated a keen sense of providing the right of organizational structure and products offer for the visitors/tourists.

Interestingly, the tourism companies have recognized the significance of key factors such as needs, wants, and satisfaction in the planning and designing of the tourism product. In the tourism industry, every tourist wants to be treated as a special client and any organization catering to this attitude of the tourist will naturally be head of other competitions.

Definitions of Tourism Marketing

According to Kotler, ” Marketing is a social and managerial process by which consumers obtain what they need and want through creating and exchanging product services and values with other .” He has emphasized more on wants, needs, satisfaction, demand, and marketers.

According to the British Chartered Institute of Marketing, ” It is the management process responsible for the identification, anticipating, assessing and satisfying the customer’s client’s requirements profitable .”

The modern marketing concept is not limited only to the identification and satisfaction of customers. It is a comprehensive process which encompasses research and analysis of society’s as well as consumer’s needs, asserts the company’s resources and marketplace and delivers the products/services to those whose experience provides a set of satisfactions which are preferable to those of the competitors.

Krippendorf defines tourism marketing,” as the systematic and coordinated execution of business policies by both private or public sector tourism organizations operated at the local, regional, national, or international level to achieve the optimal satisfaction of the needs of identifiable tourist groups, and in doing so to achieve an appropriate return .”

According to Paynter (1993), ” tour marketing is a systematic process consisting of marketing objective, strategies, schedules, marketing media, focused on the specific market segment and based on a substantial return on investment. ”

World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) at Ottawa Seminar, has defined tourism marketing as,” a management philosophy which, in the light of tourist demand, makes it possible through research, forecasting and selection of tourism products/services from suppliers, on the line with organization’s purpose and tourist satisfaction .”

The following aspects can be identified from the above definitions:

• Tourism marketing is a thought-provoking process.
• Identification and selection of the target market.
• Positioning and product lifecycle is important.
• Future tourism marketing strategies.
• Innovative/proactive marketing.

Unique Features of Tourism Marketing

Tour package as a specialized product creates a number of significant considerations which need to be fully analyzed. The management of tour package cannot be divorced from the management of service and quality. Thus, the marketing of the tour package is different from other products because the tour package is a service product where instead of selling physical goods an intangible experience is sold.

An understanding of the complexity of the tourism product concept is an essential pre-requisite for effective tour package marketing in this context. The specific features of tourism marketing are:

• The demand for tour package is highly elastic and seasonal in nature.
• Tour package is a combination of various service ingredient.
• Designing, developing and marketing of tour package a number of intermediaries are involved. Bed experience at one level can spoil the entire image of the package as well as the tour operator .
• A tourist does not only by the tour package in advance because it is consumed and felt at the same time at a particular destination.

It is not possible to evaluate/demonstrate/sample the tour package in advance because it is consumed and felt at the same time at a particular destination.

Tour Package Marketing

A tour marketing plan is a structured guide for carrying out marketing operations. It provides a common structure and focuses on all the company’s management activities. The purposes of a marketing plan include:

• It provides a clear direction for marketing operations.
• It coordinates the resources of the organization in order to eliminate confusion and misunderstanding and achieving cooperation.
• Identifying different market segments.
• Setting targets/goals.
• Identifying the organization’s strengths and weaknesses.
• Corporate mission and goals.
• External and Internal Audit.
• Business situation analysis.
• Creating the objectives.
• Providing an effective marketing mix strategy.
• Monitoring the plan.

Thus, it has become imperative to discuss the tour marketing segment, tourist generating market, and tour marketing mix before developing a tour marketing plan.

Tour Market Segmentation

It involves a division of the prospective market into identifiable groups. The reasoning behind this is that a tour package can be sold more effectively if efforts are concentrated towards those groups which are most potential.

According to Middleton, “ Market segmentation is the process whereby producers organize their knowledge of customer groups and select for particular attention those whose needs and wants they are best able to meet their product .”

The main purpose of tour market segmentation in tourism marketing are:

• Segment the tourists generating markets.
• Identify the network of intermediaries.
• Identify the nature of demand for one’s product.
• Identify the prospective tourists.

An effective market strategy will determine exactly what the target market will be and to attempt to reach only those markets. The target market is that segment of a total potential market to which the tourist attraction would be most saleable.

Targets markets are defined geographically, demographically and so forth market segmentation must be employed in the marketing programmes to both the long-term strategies. Every tourism attraction can appeal to a multitude of market segments, and the market segment can overlap a great deal. The tour manager must look at market segments and determines which one offer the promising potential for his/her service.

Tour market segment further categories into the following types:

• Geographic Segment
• Demographic Segment
• Psychographic Segment
• Socio-Economic Segment
• Price Segment

Geographic Tourism Market Segmentation

This segment is based on the idea that customer needs differ according to geographic regions.

Demographic Segmentation

Under this segmentation, the tourism market is divided into various groups, keeping in view the demographic variables such as age, income, sex family size, occupation, education, religion etc.

Behavioral Segmentation

In this segmentation, prospective tourists are segmented on the basis of their knowledge, attitude, use or response to the tour product. Under this segmentation, the marketing strategies of a four-company include:

• User Status
• Loyalty Status
• Buyer Readiness Stages

Psychographic Segmentation

Under this, the tourists are divided into different group on the basis of their social status, lifestyles, and personality characteristics. For example, upper class, upper middle, lower classes, product preferences, adventure sports, etc.

Price Segmentation

Price ranges often come in handy in segmenting the tourist markets, such as

• Those who want to take a low priced vacation.
• Those who may take a moderately priced vacation.

Price ranges communicate to the tourists the quality expectation of a product along with the producer’s image. While determining the price of a tour package a tour planner must understand the paying capacity of the tourist.

Tour Marketing Mix

In the competitive tourism marketplace, a tour operator can be successful if it’s complete marketing mix offer matches what the tourist wants. It is planned and coordinated by marketers so that the input can be contributed in such a way that the company will be able to maximize demand and satisfaction of the tourists.

The concept of the tour marketing mix is equally relevant in the case of tourism products as it is in the case of other services and goods. Tour marketing manager must constantly search for the right marketing mix, the right combination of elements that will produce a profit. The marketing mix is composed of every factor that influences marketing efforts such as:

• BrandsPricing – In the Ratio of quality and value
• Product features
• Channels of distribution – both international and national
• Advertising
• Selling techniques
• Public relation

The fundamental starting point for the creation of a successful tour marketing mix to ensure that the target market is clearly defined. The target market is the focus of all marketing mix activities. Generally, the marketing mix constitutes four P’s . These four P’s are following as:

However, besides these four P’s in the tourism industry fifth P – People, Process, Physical evidence is also of most relevance.

Developing Tour Marketing Plan

The marketing of the package tour is materially different than the marketing of other tourism products. The reasoning behind this is that the type of tours offered by one tour company and another are different, and the marketing strategies also differ from company to company.

Each company has a wide range of tours and marketing strategies. No other travel and tourism industry component have such a wide range of specialization.

This fact should be recognized, that the effective and profitable marketing strategies are based on the tour marketing plan which is a complete ‘mechanism’ for the success of a tour company. The mechanism includes several components. These component and stages of making a tourism marketing plan are following as:

Developing a tour marketing plan

Marketing Budget

Plan Strategies

Prepare Plan Schedules

Decide Media Plan

Developing Advertising Plan

Developing Public Relation Plan

Preparing an Annual Sales Plan

Feedback and Evaluation Plan

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What Is Tourism Marketing?

Published: December 12, 2023

Modified: December 28, 2023

by Oneida Gruber

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Introduction

In today’s fast-paced and interconnected world, the tourism industry has become increasingly competitive. To stay ahead and attract travelers, destinations, tour operators, and hoteliers need to implement effective marketing strategies. This is where tourism marketing plays a vital role.

Tourism marketing encompasses a range of activities aimed at promoting and selling travel services, experiences, and destinations to potential customers. It involves understanding consumer behaviors, identifying target markets, creating compelling messages, and deploying various promotional tactics to reach and engage with the right audience.

With the rise of the internet and social media, the tourism industry has witnessed a significant shift in how marketing is conducted. Digital platforms have opened up new avenues for reaching and engaging with travelers, providing ample opportunities to showcase destinations, attractions, and services.

The primary goal of tourism marketing is to increase awareness, generate interest, and drive bookings or visits. It is about inspiring and influencing travelers to choose a particular destination, tour package, or accommodation option. By effectively marketing their offerings, tourism businesses can enhance their revenue, grow their customer base, and build long-term relationships with their target audience.

However, effective tourism marketing goes beyond simply promoting travel products. It involves creating a holistic and immersive experience for travelers, reflecting the unique qualities and appeal of a destination. This requires a deep understanding of the target market’s needs, preferences, and aspirations, as well as the ability to effectively communicate the value and benefits of the travel experience.

Moreover, tourism marketing is not limited to tourism boards or large travel companies. It is also essential for small and medium-sized businesses within the industry, such as local tour operators, boutique hotels, and restaurants. By implementing targeted marketing strategies, even smaller players can compete on a global scale and attract their ideal customers.

Definition of Tourism Marketing

Tourism marketing can be defined as the strategic planning and implementation of activities that aim to promote and sell travel-related products and services. It involves understanding consumer behavior, identifying target markets, creating compelling messages, and deploying various marketing tactics to reach and engage with potential travelers.

At its core, tourism marketing is about showcasing the unique experiences and attractions that a destination has to offer. It involves leveraging the distinctive cultural, natural, and historical aspects of a place to appeal to travelers’ interests and desires.

One of the key objectives of tourism marketing is to create awareness and generate interest in a particular destination or travel experience. This can be achieved through a variety of marketing channels, including digital platforms, traditional advertising, public relations, and partnerships with travel agents and tour operators.

In addition to promoting destinations, tourism marketing also encompasses the marketing of travel services such as accommodation, transportation, activities, and tours. It involves highlighting the unique features, amenities, and benefits of these services to differentiate them in a crowded marketplace.

Moreover, tourism marketing often involves segmenting the target market based on various factors such as demographics, psychographics, and travel preferences. This allows marketers to tailor their messages and marketing strategies to specific customer segments, increasing the chances of attracting the right travelers.

Effective tourism marketing requires staying updated with the latest trends and leveraging technological advancements. With the rise of the internet and social media, digital marketing has become a crucial aspect of tourism marketing. This includes activities such as search engine optimization (SEO), content marketing, social media advertising, influencer marketing, and online reputation management.

In summary, tourism marketing is the strategic promotion and selling of travel-related products and experiences. It involves understanding consumer behavior, creating compelling messages, and deploying various marketing tactics to reach and engage with potential travelers. By effectively marketing destinations and travel services, tourism businesses can attract more visitors and drive growth in the industry.

Importance of Tourism Marketing

Tourism marketing plays a crucial role in the success and growth of the tourism industry. Here are several reasons why tourism marketing is important:

• Increasing Destination Awareness: Effective tourism marketing helps to create awareness about destinations. It showcases the unique attractions, cultural heritage, and natural beauty of a place, encouraging travelers to consider it as a potential travel destination.
• Attracting More Visitors: Through targeted marketing strategies and promotional campaigns, tourism businesses can attract more visitors to their destinations, hotels, and tour packages. By effectively communicating the value and benefits of a travel experience, marketing efforts can inspire and influence travelers to choose a specific destination.
• Boosting Local Economy: The tourism industry is a significant economic driver in many regions. By promoting tourism and attracting more visitors, tourism marketing helps to generate revenue for local businesses, create jobs, and stimulate economic growth.
• Enhancing Competitiveness: In a highly competitive tourism industry, effective marketing can give destinations and businesses a competitive edge. By promoting unique selling points and differentiating offerings, tourism businesses can stand out from the competition and attract their ideal customers.
• Cultivating Repeat Visitors: Marketing efforts, such as personalized email campaigns or loyalty programs, help to cultivate repeat visitors. By nurturing relationships with past visitors, tourism businesses can encourage them to come back and explore more of what the destination has to offer.
• Driving Collaboration: Tourism marketing often involves collaboration among stakeholders within the industry. Destination marketing organizations, hotels, tour operators, and local businesses work together to promote the destination as a whole, leveraging each other’s strengths and resources for a more impactful marketing strategy.
• Creating Positive Perception: Effective tourism marketing not only promotes destinations and travel services but also helps create a positive perception of a place. Through storytelling and compelling narratives, marketing efforts can shape and enhance the reputation of a destination, making it more appealing to potential travelers.

In a nutshell, tourism marketing is essential for raising destination awareness, attracting visitors, boosting the local economy, enhancing competitiveness, fostering repeat business, driving collaboration, and creating a positive perception of a destination. By investing in well-planned marketing strategies, tourism businesses can thrive in a highly competitive industry and contribute to the overall growth and development of the tourism sector.

Components of Tourism Marketing

Tourism marketing involves various components that work together to create effective promotional strategies. Here are the key components of tourism marketing:

• Market Research: Market research is an essential component of tourism marketing. It involves gathering and analyzing data to understand consumer behavior, travel trends, market demand, and competitor strategies. This helps tourism businesses identify their target market, tailor their marketing messages, and make informed decisions.
• Segmentation and Targeting: Segmenting the target market is crucial to deliver tailored marketing messages. Tourism marketers divide the market into specific segments based on demographics, psychographics, and travel preferences. This enables them to customize their marketing efforts and reach the right audience with the right message.
• Positioning: Positioning refers to how a destination or travel service is perceived in the minds of consumers. Tourism marketers define a unique selling proposition (USP) and create a positioning strategy to differentiate their offerings from competitors. This involves highlighting the unique features, benefits, and experiences that set them apart from others.
• Branding: Branding plays a crucial role in tourism marketing. It involves creating a distinct brand identity, including a logo, tagline, and visual elements, that represents the destination or travel service. A strong and consistent brand helps build trust, recognition, and loyalty among travelers.
• Advertising and Promotion: Advertising and promotion are key components of tourism marketing. This includes traditional advertising such as television, radio, and print ads, as well as digital advertising through search engines, social media platforms, and display networks. Promotional tactics may also include public relations, partnerships with travel influencers, and participation in travel fairs and events.
• Content Marketing: Content marketing involves creating and sharing valuable and informative content to attract and engage potential travelers. This can include blog posts, articles, videos, infographics, and social media posts that showcase the destination, provide travel tips, and inspire wanderlust. Content marketing helps build brand credibility, increase website traffic, and foster customer loyalty.
• Online Presence and Website Optimization: A strong online presence is crucial in tourism marketing. It includes having a visually appealing and user-friendly website that provides relevant information, easy navigation, and online booking options. Website optimization, including search engine optimization (SEO) and user experience (UX) optimization, helps improve visibility in search engines and enhances the overall online presence.
• Customer Relationship Management (CRM): Effective customer relationship management involves building and maintaining strong relationships with past, present, and potential customers. This can include personalized email marketing, loyalty programs, and customer feedback management. CRM helps nurture repeat business, encourage positive reviews, and strengthen customer loyalty.

By integrating these components into their marketing strategies, tourism businesses can create comprehensive and effective campaigns that resonate with their target audience and drive bookings and visits to their destinations and services.

Strategies and Tactics in Tourism Marketing

Tourism marketing involves a range of strategies and tactics to effectively promote destinations, travel services, and experiences. Here are some commonly used strategies and tactics in tourism marketing:

• Targeted Advertising: Tourism marketers utilize targeted advertising to reach specific demographics and interests. This includes running targeted ads on social media platforms, search engines, and travel-related websites to reach potential travelers who are most likely to be interested in a specific destination or travel service.
• Content Marketing: Content marketing involves creating and sharing informative and engaging content to attract and engage potential travelers. This can include blog posts, articles, videos, and social media posts that inspire and educate travelers about destinations, travel tips, and experiences. Effective content marketing builds brand credibility and connects with the target audience on a deeper level.
• Social Media Marketing: Social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter have become powerful tools in tourism marketing. By creating compelling visual content, engaging with followers, and running targeted ads, tourism businesses can reach a wide audience and generate brand awareness. Influencer partnerships and user-generated content also play a significant role in social media marketing.
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO): A well-optimized website is crucial for tourism marketing. SEO involves optimizing website content, meta tags, and other on-page elements to improve search engine rankings. A higher ranking in search results increases visibility and organic traffic to the website, ultimately leading to more bookings and visits.
• Online Reputation Management: Online reviews and ratings have a significant impact on travelers’ decision-making process. Tourism businesses need to actively manage their online reputation by encouraging positive reviews, responding to negative feedback, and addressing customer concerns promptly and professionally.
• Partnerships and Collaborations: Collaborating with influencers, local businesses, and other tourism stakeholders can amplify marketing efforts. Partnerships can include influencer campaigns, joint advertising initiatives, and cross-promotion to reach a wider audience and provide added value to travelers.
• Personalization and Customer Relationship Management (CRM): Personalization is a powerful tactic in tourism marketing. By collecting and analyzing customer data, tourism businesses can deliver personalized marketing messages, custom offers, and tailored experiences to individual travelers. CRM tools and strategies help manage customer relationships, nurture loyalty, and drive repeat business.
• Event and Experience Marketing: Hosting or sponsoring events and creating unique experiences can be highly effective in tourism marketing. This can include cultural festivals, adventure challenges, or themed tours that attract attention and create a buzz around a destination or travel service.

It’s important for tourism marketers to employ a combination of these strategies and tactics, tailored to their target audience and marketing goals. By implementing a comprehensive and integrated approach, tourism businesses can effectively engage with travelers, drive bookings, and ultimately succeed in a competitive industry.

Digital Marketing in Tourism

Digital marketing has revolutionized the way tourism businesses promote their offerings and engage with travelers. With the proliferation of the internet and social media, digital marketing has become a crucial component of tourism marketing strategies. Here are some key aspects of digital marketing in the tourism industry:

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO): SEO is essential for improving a tourism website’s visibility in search engine results. By optimizing website content, meta tags, and backlinks, tourism businesses can rank higher in search results and attract organic traffic.
• Content Marketing: Content marketing is a powerful tool in the digital landscape. By creating high-quality and valuable content, such as blog posts, articles, and videos, tourism businesses can attract and engage potential travelers, build brand credibility, and drive organic traffic to their websites.
• Social Media Marketing: Social media platforms provide tourism businesses with a direct way to connect and engage with travelers. Through strategic social media marketing, businesses can build a strong online presence, cultivate a loyal following, and showcase their destinations, services, and experiences.
• Online Advertising: Online advertising, including search engine marketing (SEM) and social media advertising, allows tourism businesses to reach a targeted audience. By running well-crafted ads, businesses can increase brand visibility, drive traffic to their websites, and generate bookings or inquiries.
• Influencer Marketing: Collaborating with travel influencers can be highly effective in digital marketing. By partnering with influencers who have a large and engaged following, tourism businesses can tap into their influence and reach, showcasing their offerings to a wider audience and gaining credibility through authentic recommendations.
• Online Travel Agencies (OTAs): OTAs such as Expedia, Booking.com, and Airbnb have become prominent players in the digital marketing landscape. Tourism businesses can leverage these platforms by listing their offerings and optimizing their presence to reach travelers who use OTAs for travel bookings.
• Email Marketing: Email marketing allows tourism businesses to nurture relationships with past and potential customers. By sending personalized and targeted emails, businesses can provide relevant offers, travel updates, and exclusive deals to encourage bookings and foster customer loyalty.
• Website Optimization and User Experience (UX): A well-designed and user-friendly website is crucial for digital marketing success. Ensuring fast loading times, easy navigation, mobile responsiveness, and clear call-to-action buttons can significantly improve user experience and boost conversion rates.

Implementing a comprehensive digital marketing strategy can give tourism businesses a competitive advantage in reaching and engaging with the modern traveler. By leveraging digital channels effectively, businesses can increase their online visibility, attract more visitors, and ultimately drive bookings and revenue.

Challenges and Trends in Tourism Marketing

The tourism industry is constantly evolving, and with it comes new challenges and emerging trends in tourism marketing. Here are some of the key challenges and trends that tourism businesses need to be aware of:

• Rising Competition: The tourism industry is becoming more competitive with the rise of digital marketing and the ease of global travel. Tourism businesses need to find innovative ways to differentiate themselves and stand out from the competition.
• Managing Online Reputation: With the increasing influence of online reviews and social media, tourism businesses need to actively manage their online reputation. Addressing customer concerns, responding to reviews, and providing excellent customer service are crucial for maintaining a positive online image.
• Changing Consumer Behavior: Consumer behavior is continuously evolving, with travelers becoming more tech-savvy and seeking personalized and unique experiences. Tourism businesses need to adapt their marketing strategies to cater to the changing preferences and expectations of travelers.
• Data Privacy and Security: With the collection and use of customer data for marketing purposes, data privacy and security have become significant concerns. Tourism businesses must comply with privacy regulations and ensure the security of customer information to maintain trust and protect sensitive data.
• Sustainability and Responsible Tourism: The growing importance of sustainability and responsible tourism has led to a shift in consumer attitudes. Travelers are increasingly seeking environmentally friendly and socially responsible travel options. Tourism businesses need to incorporate sustainability practices and communicate their commitment to responsible tourism in their marketing efforts.
• Technological Advancements: Emerging technologies such as virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and artificial intelligence (AI) are transforming the tourism industry. Tourism businesses need to stay updated with these advancements and explore ways to incorporate them into their marketing strategies to provide immersive and personalized experiences to travelers.
• Shift towards Experiential Travel: Travelers are seeking more authentic and experiential travel experiences. This has led to a shift from traditional sightseeing to immersive and meaningful experiences. Tourism businesses can capitalize on this trend by designing unique experiences and crafting compelling storytelling in their marketing campaigns.
• Influence of Social Media and Influencers: Social media platforms and travel influencers have a significant impact on consumers’ travel choices. Tourism businesses need to harness the power of social media and build relationships with influencers to effectively engage with their target audience and tap into their influence.

By acknowledging and adapting to these challenges and trends, tourism businesses can stay ahead of the curve and create effective marketing strategies that resonate with today’s travelers. Embracing technology, promoting sustainability, and delivering personalized and experiential travel offerings are key to success in the dynamic tourism industry.

Tourism marketing plays a vital role in the success and growth of the tourism industry. It encompasses various strategies and tactics aimed at promoting destinations, travel services, and experiences to potential travelers. In today’s digital age, digital marketing has become an integral part of tourism marketing, allowing businesses to reach and engage with travelers on a global scale.

Effective tourism marketing is essential for raising destination awareness, attracting visitors, boosting the local economy, enhancing competitiveness, fostering repeat business, driving collaboration, and creating a positive perception of a destination. By implementing well-planned marketing strategies, tourism businesses can thrive in a highly competitive industry and contribute to the overall growth and development of the tourism sector.

However, tourism marketing also faces various challenges, including rising competition, managing online reputation, changing consumer behavior, data privacy concerns, and the emergence of new technologies. It is crucial for tourism businesses to stay updated with the latest trends and adapt their marketing strategies to meet the evolving needs and expectations of travelers.

Looking ahead, sustainability, experiential travel, technological advancements, and the influence of social media and influencers will continue to shape the tourism industry. Tourism businesses that embrace these trends and incorporate them into their marketing strategies will be better positioned to attract and engage with modern travelers.

In conclusion, tourism marketing is a dynamic and ever-evolving field that requires creativity, adaptability, and a deep understanding of consumer behavior. By leveraging targeted strategies, embracing digital marketing channels, and staying ahead of industry trends, tourism businesses can effectively promote their offerings, attract visitors, and contribute to the growth and success of the tourism industry.

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Destination Marketing 101: Your Ultimate Guide

In an era where travel has become more accessible than ever, businesses and marketers are increasingly turning their attention to the art and science of promoting destinations. Whether you’re a seasoned marketer or just dipping your toes into the travel industry, understanding the nuances of destination marketing can significantly impact your success. 

In this comprehensive guide, we’ll navigate the landscape, exploring the definition, benefits, and proven strategies to make your destination stand out.

What is Destination Marketing?

At its core, destination marketing is a specialized form of marketing that promotes a specific location to attract visitors and boost the local economy. This type of marketing goes beyond conventional tourism marketing efforts, aiming to create a compelling narrative that captivates potential travelers. The focus is on crafting an identity for a destination, transforming it from a spot on the map to a must-visit experience.

What are the Benefits of Destination Marketing?

Destination marketing isn’t just about increasing tourist footfall; it’s about creating sustainable growth and fostering a positive impact on the local community. These are some of the main benefits:

• Economic Growth : Successful destination marketing can lead to increased spending by tourists, benefiting local businesses and creating job opportunities.
• Cultural Exchange : By showcasing the unique aspects of a destination, marketing efforts contribute to cultural exchange, fostering a deeper understanding between visitors and locals.
• Community Development : A thriving tourism industry often leads to improved infrastructure, public services, and community well-being.

Now that we’ve covered why destination marketing matters, let’s shift gears and dive into the practical strategies to make it work seamlessly.

What Are The Best Strategies for Destination Marketing Success?

Embarking on successful destination marketing involves employing a set of strategic moves that go beyond the basics, ensuring your efforts resonate with your audience and leave a lasting impact. Let’s dive into these key strategies and see what they entail.

1. Understand Your Target Audience

Understanding your target audience is the foundation of any successful destination marketing campaign. Dive deep into demographics, interests, and behaviors to create detailed buyer personas. For instance, if your destination is a paradise for adventure enthusiasts, consider age groups, preferences, and online behaviors associated with this demographic.

To illustrate even further, imagine your analysis reveals a significant interest in eco-friendly travel among your audience. Tailor your marketing messages to highlight sustainable practices and the environmental initiatives your destination supports.

2. Target Pain Points

Addressing the pain points of potential travelers is a strategic move that builds trust and connection. Identify common concerns, such as safety, accessibility, or language barriers, and showcase how your destination mitigates these issues.

Create content addressing safety measures, accessible infrastructure, and language support in your destination. Implement customer service initiatives that directly tackle concerns raised by previous travelers.

For example, if safety is a concern, feature testimonials from solo travelers who felt secure during their visit. Highlight security measures and partnerships with local law enforcement to reassure prospective visitors.

3. Identify USPs (Unique Selling Points)

USP is a distinctive and compelling characteristic or benefit that sets a product, service, or brand apart from its competitors in the eyes of the target audience. Every destination has unique features that make it uniquely attractive to visitors. 

Identifying and using these USPs is crucial for creating a compelling narrative that resonates with your target audience. Conduct surveys and interviews to discover what visitors find most memorable about your destination. Showcase unique attractions, experiences, or cultural elements that differentiate your destination from others.

4. Analize Your Competitors

A thorough analysis of competitors in the travel industry can provide valuable insights into market trends, successful strategies, and areas for differentiation. By understanding what works and what doesn’t, you can refine your destination marketing plan.

Get started by monitoring competitors’ social media channels, websites, and marketing materials. Then, find gaps in their strategies and capitalize on areas where your destination excels. 

If your competitors primarily focus on luxury experiences, consider targeting a niche market, such as budget travelers, or emphasize unique cultural aspects that others haven’t extensively promoted.

5. Craft a Compelling Destination Brand

Developing a compelling brand is about more than just a visually appealing logo; it’s about creating a holistic brand identity that resonates with your audience. Let’s see what goes into it.

Logo and Visual Elements

Invest in a professional logo that encapsulates the spirit of your destination. The logo should be versatile and easily recognizable. Extend the visual identity beyond the logo. Consistent color schemes, fonts, and imagery across all marketing materials contribute to a cohesive and memorable visual brand.

Brand Personality

Define the personality of your destination as if it were a person. Is it adventurous, relaxed, or culturally vibrant? Align your marketing messages, visuals, and tone with this personality. Create content that reflects the desired personality, whether it’s through adventurous activity guides, serene landscapes, or cultural anecdotes.

For example, if your destination has a laid-back beach vibe, your brand personality may be casual, easy-going, and carefree. Emphasize leisurely activities, sunsets, and relaxation in your marketing materials.

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Creating a Memorable Tagline

Craft a tagline that encapsulates the essence of your destination in a few words. The tagline should be catchy, easy to remember, and evoke the emotions you want associated with your brand. Keep it concise and impactful, and test it with a focus group to ensure it resonates with your target audience.

Consistency is Key

In the end, ensuring you maintain consistency across all platforms is crucial for brand recognition. Whether it’s social media, print materials, or your website, a cohesive brand identity builds trust and familiarity. 

Create brand guidelines to ensure consistency in visuals, tone, and messaging. Regularly audit your marketing materials to ensure they align with the established brand identity.

6. Focus on Video and Visuals

In today’s digital world, catching the eye is all about the visuals. Think of it like a visual feast – you want potential travelers to savor the experience before they even arrive. Let’s break it down:

Video Content

Videos are like a magic carpet ride, giving viewers a taste of the adventure, beauty, and vibe of your destination. Picture this: clips of local life, thrilling activities, and stunning landscapes, all in motion. A good video can transport people and make them feel the excitement, making them want to pack their bags pronto.

Stunning Images

Invest in top-notch photos that capture the heart of your destination. Whether it’s a jaw-dropping view or a candid moment of local life, these images should make potential travelers daydream about being there.

Virtual Reality Tours

Virtual reality tours are like having a personal tour guide without leaving your couch. Use VR tech to create virtual adventures, letting people explore your destination from the comfort of their homes. These virtual tours are like a teaser, sparking excitement and making them want to see more.

7. Work With Influencers

Engaging with influencers can significantly boost your destination’s visibility. These social media figures have large followings, making them effective messengers for your brand. Partnering with influencers aligns your destination with trusted voices in the digital space, reaching audiences that value their recommendations. 

Encourage influencers to share genuine experiences , adding authenticity to your marketing efforts. Choose influencers whose style resonates with your destination’s vibe, creating a natural and effective partnership. It’s about leveraging their influence to narrate your destination’s story in a way that feels both honest and appealing.

8. Create Collaborations and Partnerships

Other than influencers, explore diverse partnerships that can elevate your brand and enhance the overall appeal of your destination. Connecting with local businesses is a smart move to enhance your destination’s charm. 

By teaming up with nearby spots, you’re not just supporting the community but also giving visitors a richer experience. Work with restaurants, shops, and attractions to create packages that add value for travelers. These local partnerships boost your destination’s local ties and create a more complete experience for visitors.

Also, collaborative campaigns , whether with nearby destinations or brands that complement yours, spread your message to a wider audience. Think of joint promotions, shared content, and events that bring more eyes to your destination.

Find partners who share your values for a seamless collaboration that benefits everyone involved. Through these campaigns, you’re not just marketing a place – you’re crafting a story that captures a broader audience’s attention and interest.

9. Create And Optimize Your Destination Website

Your destination’s website is the virtual gateway for potential travelers. Ensure it’s user-friendly, visually appealing, and provides all the necessary information. Then, optimize it for search engines to increase its visibility. This includes keyword optimization, local SEO, and creating high-quality content that resonates with your target audience.

10. Start Blogging

Content marketing is a powerful tool in destination marketing. And the good news is – there are so many topics to cover! Start a blog on your website to share engaging stories, travel tips, and insider information about your destination. This not only attracts organic traffic but also positions your destination as an authority. Ensure that you keep this content in line with your SEO strategies, targeting the right keywords and optimizing it to rank well in search engines

11. Social Media Strategies

Harness the power of social media to connect with your audience on a personal level. Here’s how:

• User Reviews and Testimonials : Encourage visitors to share their experiences on social media platforms. User-generated content adds authenticity and serves as valuable social proof.
• Running Social Media Contests : Engage your audience with contests that encourage participation. Whether it’s photo contests or travel stories, these initiatives create a buzz and attract attention.
• Showcasing Authentic Experiences: Use your social media channels to showcase authentic experiences. Share real stories from visitors, behind-the-scenes glimpses, and captivating visuals that convey the essence of your destination.

12. Online Advertising Strategies

Use online advertising to broaden your destination’s visibility across digital landscapes. This strategic approach involves deploying different types of ads tailored to meet the varied online behaviors of your potential visitors.

Here are the types of online ads you can use: 

• Display Advertising : Think of this as your digital billboard. Display ads utilize captivating visuals strategically placed on websites, drawing attention to the unique features of your destination.
• Search Advertising : Have you ever noticed the label “Ad” at the top of your search results? That’s search advertising at work. It ensures your destination stands out when users actively seek travel options.
• Social Media Ads : Picture your destination seamlessly integrated into users’ social feeds. Social media ads act as tailored narratives, showcasing your offerings based on users’ interests and demographics.

Overall, online ads cast a broad net, extending your destination’s reach to a diverse audience. Tailor your ads to specific groups, addressing the preferences of adventure seekers, food enthusiasts, or cultural explorers. This ensures a more personalized and impactful engagement.

13. Events and Promotions

When it comes to creating buzz around your destination, events and promotions are your dynamic duo.

Hosting Destination Events

Imagine your destination as a vibrant host of engaging events that not only showcase its uniqueness but also foster a sense of community. Here are the types of events that will make your destination an easy-to-market, attractive place for travelers: 

• Festivals : Dive into the heart of your destination’s culture by organizing festivals. These celebrations not only embrace local traditions but also draw in a diverse audience, adding a lively touch to your community.
• Cultural Events : Elevate the allure of your destination through culturally rich events – from captivating art exhibitions to the rhythm of music festivals and captivating performances. It’s not just an event; it’s an invitation to experience the soul of your locale.

Limited-Time Promotions and Discounts

Now, let’s talk about creating a buzz that’s quick and effective – limited-time promotions and discounts. This strategy not only lures budget-conscious travelers but also amps up the overall curiosity about your destination. It’s like an exclusive invitation to a fantastic deal that can’t be missed.

Stay on Top of Your Destination Marketing Strategies

On a final note, once you start with destination marketing, you need to know how your efforts are performing and how you can improve in the future. Consider website analytics – it’s like peeking at a map to see where visitors are coming from, what they’re interested in, and where they’re spending the most time. 

Additionally, stay informed about industry trends—like virtual experiences or niche travel—to keep your marketing strategy relevant and appealing. This helps you adjust your marketing strategy, keeping it fresh, interesting, and in tune with what travelers are looking for. 

Wrapping It Up: Your Destination’s Next Chapter

And there you have it – a journey through destination marketing strategies that goes beyond the mundane. We’re not just talking about selling a place; we’re talking about creating connections, sharing tales, and building a community.

Now that you’ve got these strategies under your belt, your destination is more than a spot on the map; it’s a living, breathing experience waiting to captivate.

Are you curious about how Play Media can enhance your destination’s narrative? Let’s chat! Contact us for a consultation, and let’s turn your destination into a must-visit chapter in every traveler’s journey. 

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What is Tourism Marketing? 15 Strategies in 2023

March 22, 2023 | By Hitesh Bhasin | Filed Under: Marketing

From hotels and other types of accommodation to car rental services, airlines , restaurants, entertainment spots, and travel agents – tourism marketing encompasses a wide range of advertising and marketing strategies often used by companies in the tourism and travel industry themselves. All these various marketing efforts are put together under one collective name – Tourism Marketing!

Tourism marketing is an essential tool for a business to ensure they are standing apart from its competitors, garnering customers, and creating brand recognition. Nowadays, various digital marketing platforms such as websites, online ads, email marketing campaigns , and social media marketing outlets have become vital components of modern tourism marketing initiatives for businesses.

Table of Contents

What is Tourism Marketing?

Tourism marketing is a type of marketing used by businesses operating in the travel and tourism industry to attract tourists to a business name or particular location which can be a state, a city, a particular heritage site or tourist destination spot, a hotel, or a convention center anything.

Achieving success in the travel and tourism industry requires thoughtful Tourism Marketing campaigns that are designed to generate brand awareness , create both, reach the most target audience or potential customers, drive traffic, foster loyalty among existing clients, and create a captivating customer experience . By utilizing these strategies, businesses can effectively engage with travelers while generating more sales opportunities.

Tourism Marketing has been profoundly impacted in recent years by digital development, as well as changes in consumer attitudes and desires. Crafting successful Tourism marketing messages today entails taking advantage of social media platforms, featuring user generated content, leveraging online reviews and search engines to your benefit, collaborating with influencers to drive traffic and expand reach, and experimenting with various channels for targeted messaging to attract travelers and optimize their customer journey in a way to convert them into loyal customers.

Why is Tourism Marketing Important?

To make a tourism business thrive, savvy marketing is an absolute must. By staying up-to-date with current trends and launching impactful campaigns, businesses can boost the recognition of their brand, gain customer loyalty and attract travellers. Moreover, tourism marketing holds promise for contributing to the economic growth of the region by driving tourists towards local enterprises.

The tourism industry is one of the biggest in the world and therefore highly competitive. To succeed, businesses must differentiate themselves from their competitors by promoting and advertising what makes them unique, showcasing why they’re the best option for tourists, and advertising and highlighting any special features that set them apart.

To allow businesses to gain a competitive advantage , marketing is essential. Many of the top tourism marketing approaches concentrate on highlighting a business’ unique selling point and broadcasting it effectively. Moreover, marketers must keep abreast with current trends to generate an effective promotional mix and deploy the most viable methods for disseminating their message across all channels.

Understanding the concept of Tourism Marketing

Tourism marketing is associated with most businesses, with marketing strategies in the field of tourism.  Today there are many countries in the world, where the tourism industry plays a major role in economic development , enhancing their GDP.

In such cases, tourism and digital marketing become important things. Many of the places are generally the hotspot for tourists like the Taj Mahal in India. Now places like these are considered the perfect areas where one can boost tourism through digital marketing.

The places which are more likely to be the major spots for attracting tourists are the places where tourism marketing flourishes the most. Now tourism marketing is all about applying several marketing techniques and strategies to create and boost the tourism industry of that place.

For successful tourism marketing to take place, the thing that is required the most is that the brands should speak for themselves in such a way that makes sense that their voices can be heard in the targeted markets.  This way they will be able to generate the cleanest successfully. Also, they need to be really careful in providing services to clients.

This is because if the customers are happy with the services chances they will spread the word and this may bring them more customers.  In the case of tourism marketing, it becomes easy to find the right audiences and create content to draw the attention of the targeted customers to the website by providing encouraging content.  Thus strategic planning , content marketing, and branding is the key to effective tourism marketing.

With it being carried out by keeping these two points in mind, chances are that the company that is involved in tourism marketing will be able to gain the advantage over their existing customers in no time and become a monopoly in the tourism industry.

What are the different ways in which Tourism Marketing Can Be Done in 2023?

Now various methods are applied for tourism marketing to flourish.  Below are some of the important ways in which the tourism marking of any place is given a boost.

1) Location marketing

In this type of marketing strategy , the main focus of tourism marketing is one bringing people’s attention to a specific location. In this strategy , no recommendations are made with respect to a particular site or any accommodation. Now some locations are already so popular all over the world that tourism marketers don’t have to make many efforts to attract their attention to such places.

All they need to do to attract customers is remind them of such locations and chances are that the consumer can easily get convinced to spend money and visit any such place. For example, Las Vegas is popular for its undying charm and full of life kind of prospects.

Now there s also a popular slogan related to Las Vegas which is ‘What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas’. This slogan has gained worldwide popularity and almost everyone wants to visit Las Vegas at least once.

So here the tourism marketers have to simply remind people of how amazing this city is and what are the different ways in which they can have the time of their lives here. Another example that can be taken in Florida.

They use a more ‘benefit-oriented’ approach. Their slogan and website are ‘The Sunshine State’.  This way they are presenting their state with a joyous and charming climate and as a perfect place for beach and football lovers.  Also with their slogan and website, they are successfully able to present their state as an ideal ‘summer vacation’ destination and are definitely a dream for many to visit this place.

Thus location marketing is one of the simplest forms of tourism marketing in which without even putting much effort, with the brand value and the popularity of some specific location, the customers can be attracted.

2) Activity marketing

Now, this type of tourism is carried out keeping in mind both the location and the activities that are performed in such places.  This type of tourism marketing strategy usually keeps in mind travelers who are adventure lovers or activity freaks.

There are many other sites and locations all over the world that are famous for some specific activities. Like Alaska is famous for snowboarding, Yellowstone national park is famous for thrilling activities like hiking, and camping and is a perfect place for all nature lovers, similarly, there is ‘Colonial Williamsburg’ which attracts all history lovers.

Thus depending on the target audience and the type of activity that a particular place is famous for, tourism marketing can be carried out. Some people may be adventure lovers, some people may be looking for art and culture some people love hunting, depending upon their area of expertise and interest, the tourism markers can segment the groups of potential visitors and customers and approach them.

Thus activity marketing is a form of tourism making and social media marketing that emphasizes the booking process and bringing the attention of a customer to particular places on the basis of the activities that are performed there.

3) Corporate marketing

This is quite an interesting approach to tourism marketing. Now it has been found that a large number of people working in corporate sectors have to travel to different places to attend a conference or a meeting.

Then according to research, it was found these locations were ideal for tourists, and a number of people came to attend those places. Also, they brought their families and their loved ones as well. Now considering these scenarios’ latest trends in mind, corporate influencer marketing can contribute a lot to tourism marketing as it has significant potential.

Here the tourism marketers take advantage of the fact that by planning the business meeting in touristy places, people come in large numbers thus they can make a lot of profit out of it.

What are the four basic pillars of Tourism Marketing?

The foundation of tourism marketing stands firmly on four of its important pillars which are the product , the price, the place, email marketing, and the promotion.

Let us understand each of these separately as to how they contribute to tourism marketing!

Marketing Mix of Tourism

1) product in tourism marketing.

One of the most important aspects of the tourism marketing strategy is to determine the effect of the selling benefits and the other types of benefits that are re-obtained by competing with their rivals in the same market .

Tourism marketers need to focus more on such destinations that provide both business advantages to travel brands and pleasure to their customers. These pleasures depend on several factors like the ease of traveling, facilities of the sites and the hotels, the nightlife of that place, activities offered, and the overall culture of that place.

Thus by considering these factors, tourism marketers will understand the areas that have to focus more on, so that marketing can be done effectively.

2) Price in Tourism Marketing

The price point is yet another important aspect of tourism marketing. Now many people avoid traveling due to money-related issues.  And this is where tourism marketing comes in to save the day.  Today so many mobile apps have been developed, on which if a person books a hotel r a transport like a flight or a train, they get discounts. This attracts a lot of customers.

Along with the free referral marketing, they also try to give value-added services to their customers. Some hotels also offer free shuttle services to their visitors. Also depending on whether it is a high season or an offseason, the prices are altered.  

3) Place in Tourism Marketing

Now for tourism marketing to earn a profit, deciding the location where they want to perform the marketing can play a key role in how far they can go. The place refers to the area where the products and services can be distributed.

Now in tourism and destination marketing, the location and the destination marketers offer their products and services to their customers through travel agents, tour operators, inside sales teas, etc.  The distribution of their products and services to visitors can be done through catalogs, online, sites, mobile devices, websites, stores, etc.

4) Promotion

In this numerous different strategies and technologies are used for the promotion of any specific area or tourist destination.  In fact, trade magazines and meeting planners are also efficient ways for promotion purposes.

These often come with many other forms of discount coupons, brochures, etc. also they try their target customers to come across the ads that pop up on the website to make them aware of the various tourist places.

15 Tourism Marketing Strategies in 2023

1. prioritising hygiene and safety via marketing communication.

Tourism marketers must now prioritize safety and hygiene to give their customers peace of mind when they travel. By highlighting the protocols that are being taken, tourists can rest assured knowing they will be protected while visiting.

2. Developing Loyalty Programmes

Loyalty programs are the ideal way to demonstrate your appreciation for existing customers and stimulate repeated patronage. Tourism marketers should construct loyalty programs that will not only retain existing customers but also appeal to fresh audiences.

3. Capitalising on Voice Search

In the age of voice search, it is essential for tourism marketers to create content that can be quickly found and accessed. Optimizing your site and content for this new technology will bolster your site for visibility and success in the long term.

4. Facilitating User-Generated Content

User-generated content, such as ratings and reviews on social media, is critical in helping customers make informed decisions. User-generated social media content is one of the key tourism marketing trends.

5. Deploying Artificial Intelligence:

AI technology is a valuable asset for Tourism marketers, allowing them to track customer behavior and create personalized brand experiences tailored to each individual. This can help customers find the brand information they need quicker and more easily than ever before.

6. Not Neglect Review Marketing

Reviews and ratings are a critical resource for Tourism companies, making them an invaluable asset in swaying potential customer decisions. Any Tourism marketer must recognize the importance of reviews if they wish to stay competitive.

7. Enhancing the Guest Experience & Satisfaction Through Chatbots

Chatbots can be a vital tool in creating an effortless, tailored experience for all customers. Chatbot technology should be a top priority for the hospitality and tourism industry to provide quick customer service and support, as well as respond promptly to any inquiries.

8. Investing in Remarketing Efforts

Maximizing your Tourism business’ potential by tapping into already engaged customers is a surefire way of increasing sales. Leverage the power of remarketing to maximize your potential and gain more qualified leads.

9. Utilising Augmented Reality Technology

Augmented reality provides the ideal platform for tourism businesses to build mesmerizing and unforgettable experiences for their customers.

10. Prioritising Personalisation

Customization is a crucial element of this form of marketing. By personalizing content and messages to the target audience’s wants and needs, Tourism marketers can engineer and create an experience that will ensure positive word-of-mouth publicity for their business or brand.

11. Exploring Metaverse

The metaverse is becoming more and more popular with tourism companies, as it allows them to give their customers an unparalleled, immersive experience.

12. Using NFTs

Non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, are quickly becoming a widely recognized trend. Tourism companies can harness this technology to propel their marketing campaigns and draw in more visitors.

13. Promoting Virtual Reality (VR) Tours

Allow your customers to explore new destinations without even having to leave their homes – with VR tours, the possibilities are endless!

14. Focusing on the Customer Experience

Crafting an exceptional customer experience should be the primary focus of any Tourism promotional strategy . Optimizing customer experiences on all marketing channels is crucial.

15. Embracing content and influencer marketing

Content and influencer marketing are essential building blocks of any successful tourism strategy. It helps in optimizing the presence of a travel business in the search engine.

Thus, tourism and travel agency marketing are one of the branches of marketing that deal with the tourism and travel industry only.

It is essential to carry out efficient tourism marketing, as one can make a lot of money through this because there are so many people in this world who love traveling, and this can help the tourism marketing industry to flourish their business.

Liked this post? Check out the complete series on Marketing

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About Hitesh Bhasin

Hitesh Bhasin is the CEO of Marketing91 and has over a decade of experience in the marketing field. He is an accomplished author of thousands of insightful articles, including in-depth analyses of brands and companies. Holding an MBA in Marketing, Hitesh manages several offline ventures, where he applies all the concepts of Marketing that he writes about.

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This was a great article! Now I’m interested in a career in tourism marketing. How do I start? I already write travel content/copywriting blogs for an agency. Where would I go from there?

this article really helped me in conducting research on tourism. Thank you very much

This article helped me alot on my academic research

Hello,the article is highly assisting and I am seriously having interest in studying Tourism Marketing.

This information was very helpful

hey! This is a good and interesting article about tourism marketing. I am a second degree student in tourism business administration,the program is all about tourism as a business perspective.if you can possible,please post such relevant articles via email address that i have attached below the space provided.

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What is destination marketing.

In Blog , Travel Industry .

By Tom Mcloughlin, Founder, SEO Travel .

There are plenty of different tried-and-tested marketing strategies out there in the travel industry, from email campaigns to influencer collaborations and wacky PR stunts. If you’re a travel business that offers holiday experiences or services in one specific area, likely, you may already have heard of destination marketing, which is one targeted approach that can make a big difference to business growth.

In recent years, destination marketing has occasionally fallen out of favour as certain locations have become overcrowded or saturated with tourists to the point where local people can no longer enjoy their hometowns and cities in peace.

However, when done correctly, destination marketing is a very effective marketing approach that is particularly beneficial to smaller travel companies who are looking for a way to increase visibility and carve out a space in the market.

In this article:

Destination Marketing Defined

What are the benefits of destination marketing, 8 successful destination marketing strategies.

• Summary of Destination Marketing

Destination marketing is a marketing approach in the travel industry that involves promoting a specific location and its benefits instead of the product or service that a company offers. This could be a country, a town or city, or even a specific holiday resort or attraction.

The purpose of destination marketing is to increase customer awareness of a certain destination so that they start to think about visiting, or to help them remember the location when they are ready to book a holiday. By slipping in subtle calls to action and mentions of a brand’s offering, the idea is that potential customers will decide to book a holiday to that destination through the company that is promoting it.

Destination marketing is also often used by the tourist boards of certain countries or regions as a way to try and bring more visitors to the area to boost the local economy and establish themselves as a desirable holiday destination.

The main aim of destination marketing is to make the customer aware of and interested in the target location before they arrive. You want to spark an emotional desire to see and experience the place you are offering, as this makes the likelihood of paying for a holiday much higher.

One of the key benefits of destination marketing is that it tends to use an emotional hook to engage potential customers, which leads to much higher conversion rates. The whole approach is about selling the experience and benefits of a location by showing customers what their travel experience could be like if they visit, encouraging people to imagine a holiday there and planting a seed of intrigue in their minds.

Not only does engaging your target audience’s emotions make them more likely to convert, but it is also likely to build more affinity with your brand. Techniques used in destination marketing include things like video content, offering exclusive guides and recommendations and sharing customer testimonials, all of which will make your company seem more ‘human’ and build a relationship of trust with your audience.

Another benefit of destination marketing is that it focuses on the offering of a location instead of the specific holiday packages or travel experiences that your brand sells. By producing marketing material that is not explicitly pushing a product, your target audience will trust the recommendations and advice you share and view you as a true expert for your target destination, instead of just a company trying to sell holidays.

Finally, a wider benefit of destination marketing is that it improves the reputation and increases the interest in the location that you offer travel experiences. This will encourage more tourism and boost the area’s local economy, which in turn will create more business for your company.

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Whilst the majority of marketing techniques can be used as part of a destination marketing strategy, several approaches work particularly well. Here are 8 strategies to consider if your brand decides to focus on promoting a destination as part of its marketing plan.

1. Understand Your Target Audience

This is a piece of advice that you’ll likely have heard countless times when it comes to successful marketing in the travel industry. If you want to get your target audience’s attention, you need to understand what they care about and what they want to engage with.

In destination marketing, this approach is particularly important. If you just highlight generic benefits or features of your target destination, you’re not going to appeal to anyone in particular and your advertising material is going to have much less of an impact.

Before you think about what attractions and experiences you’re going to focus on in your destination marketing strategy, first go back to the segments of the audience that your travel brand targets. Identify what they’re looking for from travel and holiday experiences, whether that’s specific activities or personal benefits.

Then, use these focal points to decide what elements of the destination you’re going to highlight in your marketing campaigns.

2. Target Pain Points

Leading on from that last point, you should also ensure that you’re using the benefits of your destination to solve your target audience’s pain points.

This is a particularly successful approach because destination marketing is a strategy that engages potential customers’ emotions by tapping into their desires and offering an experience instead of just a product. You can take this emotional response even further by targeting their pain points and offering a solution through the destination.

An example of this may be that a key pain point for your target audience is finding holidays that include meaningful experiences instead of just mindless rest and relaxation. You could target this by creating advertising content that showcases the different cultural attractions in your destination or the opportunities to learn about the area’s history, promising a holiday that is enriching and enlightening.

3. Identify USPs

The start of every destination marketing campaign should begin by listing all of the unique selling points of wherever you are focusing on. This approach is all about standing out from other popular destinations, and the only way to do this is to shout about what makes your location so special.

You don’t need to be subtle about showcasing the unique qualities of a destination either. In fact, many well-known travel marketing campaigns have been so successful because they’ve taken a specific and often bizarre quality about a location and turned it into the key attraction for visiting wherever they are promoting.

For example, the Faroe Islands tourism board capitalised on the destination’s remote quality, and the fact that it has such a high population of sheep, to create the ‘ Sheep View ’ marketing campaign, which massively boosted the islands’ popularity with travellers.

4. Analyse Your Competitors

We’re not just talking about analysing other destinations that are frequently pitted against yours when we talk about competitors, although this is something to consider when analysing the business landscape. We suggest going even more specific and identifying other travel brands that market your chosen destination, particularly ones of a similar size to your business.

If you want to stand out in the industry and build a customer base of dedicated travel enthusiasts, you need to ensure that your marketing content is advertising a totally unique experience. Before you come up with a destination marketing strategy of your own, take time to see what’s already out there and ensure that you’re not going to be targeting a niche that has already been taken care of.

5. Use Video

This is one of the most common techniques used in destination marketing, but for good reason. There’s no better way to showcase a destination and give a glimpse of the kinds of experiences on offer than through video content, whether you’re making full-length guides to a place or just adding little snippets of video to your website and social media profiles.

Sometimes, it can be enough just to shoot stunning visuals of a location, accompanied by simple captions or overlayed text, to catch potential customers’ attention and start to inspire their wanderlust. Or you can take a more direct approach and create video testimonials from previous customers, introductions to attractions or accommodation from staff, or even vlogs and short video diaries illustrating a first-hand experience of a trip to your destination.

6. Focus on Visuals

Whilst video is probably the most effective content format you can use in destination marketing, anything visual is going to have an impact. From the photos you use on your website to the images shared on social media and graphics included in press releases or email newsletters, having a strong visual identity is a key part of marketing for a specific destination.

Not only do you want to inspire and engage your audience with every piece of visual content you share, but you also want to establish a “look” that becomes synonymous with your brand. That way, potential customers are more likely to remember you and start associating your company with a particular destination, which means they’re more likely to think of you first when it comes to booking a holiday there.

7. Collaborate With Influencers

Influencer marketing has taken off in the travel industry in the last couple of years, and it’s a technique that works really well as part of a destination marketing campaign. There’s no better way to showcase what a trip to a location is really like than showing a real person’s experience, and working with an influencer is perfect for this.

The type of influencer campaign you run will depend on the kind of travel business you are part of, your brand’s offering and your target audience. Some companies offer free holidays in exchange for an influencer to share their experience across their own channels, whilst others will work with influencers to create informative, promotional content that is shared by the brand themselves.

8. Go Beyond Stereotypes

When coming up with ideas for destination marketing campaigns, it can be tempting to fall back on stereotypes of what locations in certain parts of the world are like, or what the benefits of popular holiday experiences are. Whilst these kinds of stereotypes tend to be based on truth, they are much less likely to make an impact on potential customers, as they’re likely just showcasing features that have been seen before.

Instead of relying on predictable visuals, formats, and slogans, try and offer your audience something genuinely valuable and unique with your content. Don’t fall into predictable patterns with what you advertise (eg: safaris in Africa, beach holidays on tropical islands, winter holidays in classic ski locations) and instead think about undiscovered areas of the market you can conquer.

Destination marketing is an essential part of the travel industry and is an approach used by everyone from large tourism companies to small travel brands. By focusing on the benefits and offering of a location instead of a specific holiday package or travel deal, businesses can build up more authority as an expert provider for a specific destination — also appealing to a wider audience with marketing content that inspires and engages instead of steamrolling with a hard sell.

If you need more information or help with your travel marketing strategy or want to find out more about approaches like destination marketing, get in touch with SEO Travel for a chat and to find out more about the range of marketing services that we offer.

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What is destination marketing?

Firstly, let's answer the question "What is destination marketing?". Destination marketing is a type of marketing that promotes a destination (town, city, region, country) with a purpose to increase the number of visitors. In other words, destination marketing is tourism advertising for a specific location. Unlike product marketing, where the products are delivered to customers through distribution channels, accoriding to destination marketing meaning, consumers travel to the destinations. Which bring some peculiarities to the ways of promotion.

Why destination marketing?

Over the last few years, travellers have discovered the places they were going to visit, book hotels and transportation, plan trips and share their emotions and memories with friends online. The main answer to the question ‘what destination marketing is for?’ – is to stay competitive.

The primary challenge is to make your consumers interested in your location before they arrive using social media marketing and search engine optimisation . For this:

• Show the privileges of your country (region, city, town etc)
• Create and share the story about the destination you promote
• Care about customer experience (CX) – be sure your website is attractive, convenient, and fast-loading.
• Create Google Posts via Google My Business profile about the best sightseeing, magnificent places, or traditional holidays. These will appear in the top search results with images enhancing your overall SEO for free.

However, depending on the purpose and destination, you should use different online tools. For instance, to promote a country it is better to concentrate on contextual ads, search engine ads and social media (within your targeted region, i.e. the region you would like to target).

‍ To promote a town or a city , pay attention to testimonials services (as most likely, your potential customers would like to check references concerning accommodation facilities, activities, and your location accessibility).

‍ And the most useful tool to promote a region will be search engine ads and social media (pay attention to cultural and natural attractions, region peculiarities and features). Find out more about the aforementioned tools here or contact our representative .

How to succeed?

According to the Travel trends Report 2018, 9 of 10 travellers consider it essential to read online reviews . Moreover, 95% of travellers always trust tour & activity reviews on third-party sites such as TripAdvisor. However, if the destination is not that popular yet – travel consumers are looking for video and photo material to find out what to expect from the location they would like to visit. However, the first step in country promotion is to highlight a particular destination or to draw attention to it. To succeed in tourism advertising, you should analyse the ‘product’ and focus your marketing activities on:

• Identifying the right audience (in other words answer the questions “Who are those people who want to see your destination?”, “How old are they?”, “How do they travel?”, “Do they travel with their families?”, “What are their needs?”)
• Finding their motivation (“Why would they like to see the destination?”, “What are they going to do there?”, “How much are they going to spend?”, “What do they want to get?”)
• Matching your audience ‘needs’ with ‘wants’.

A piece of advice here would be to cooperate with government officials of the country you are going to promote to get the most objective data for your research and to get a better understanding of the specificity of the promoted region.

To delve deeper into destination marketing, we asked our digital marketing expert, who was involved in promoting tourism in Georgia, to answer the most common questions about destination marketing.

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How to start promoting a destination if the brand has not been promoted before?

To create online destination marketing campaigns, we need to segment users who plan a trip or are looking for tours at the moment. For this, we use segments of interests, related to airline tickets, tours, summer and family vacations.

To improve the quality of this audience, we need to narrow down such targeting to interests in a specific destination. It can be historical, cultural spots or even cuisine.

You should decide whether to narrow interests or use broad targeting under specific socio-demographic data, based on your primary goals. Please remember that the narrower the audience, the more expensive such a campaign can cost.

Besides, you should determine the age category of users who will be interested in a potential trip to the promoted destination. Also, consider the conditions that other destinations offer consumers, as well as options for spending time there, for example, active/passive leisure.

Since one group can be interested in a calm vacation with their children, and another one can’t imagine their life without extreme. Based on this, it may be worthwhile to exclude the audience of minor users from showing ads.

Also, depending on the goals and KPIs , you can segment the audience by gender and age. For example, select groups of men aged 18-24 years, women aged 25-36 years old, and so on.

Do not forget about ad creatives and their impact on different gender and age groups of consumers.

What are the strategies for destination marketing? And how to develop a promotion strategy?

Determine competitive aspects and advantages. You should consider that not a physical place in and of itself attracts a tourist, but what natural, cultural, historical sights they can find there. Tourists also pay special attention to infrastructure.

• Define the goals of your advertising campaigns. Understanding the benefits of your product and destination, you can set realistic goals and clear KPIs.
• Identify and analyse your audience before the campaign launch. Think over the creatives for each segment of users.
• Choose marketing tools that can solve your tasks and help you achieve initial KPIs.
• Develop a media plan according to your KPIs. If you promote the destination for the first time, this can be a difficult task. For this, you need to research the market, connect your expertise in similar projects.
• Develop creatives and textual content in all necessary formats. If we talk about media placement, then creatives can play both a decisive role in achieving your goal and be one of the reasons for advertising campaign failure. You also need to pay attention to the ad textual content. If you target your ad for several countries at once, then translation and adaptation of texts to specific regions may be required.
• Create an ad campaign. Collect semantics and configure the audience.
• Launch an ad campaign. We would highlight, that you need to check all the ad campaign settings before the launch. Especially if there are several countries in your geo settings.
• Monitor and adjust. Advertising campaigns need to be optimised during the performance. We would recommend paying attention to these stages:
• Identification of ineffective audiences, targeting.
• Work with search queries to save budget and attract more targeted traffic.
• A / B testing of creatives. You need to remember that your banners may “burnout”: at a high frequency, do not use the same creatives for more than two weeks. A marketing strategy aimed at strong memorising of one particular video or banner can be an exception.

What are the most effective channels for destination marketing?

Media channels are the most effective for destination marketing strategies. This is advertising on social networks, YouTube, native advertising. It is often better to “sell” a destination to a user and bring them to a final information resource with an image or video.

We are talking about relaxing, so a beautiful creative can take a person to a state of serenity and could potentially cause interest.

Paid search advertising can be launched, but only for narrowly targeted queries, for example, “vacation in Georgia”. The queries like “Georgia” can bring a lot of irrelevant traffic, even if you indicated negative keywords.

Be free to run remarketing campaigns in all channels, because advertising campaigns can last several months, and remarketing allows you to re-interact with an already “warm” audience.

Which ad format is best for social networks?

Instagram stories is a more engaging format. The image occupies 100% of the screen, but this does not mean that you need to refuse ads in the feed. According to Facebook insights, campaigns that use auto-placement give the best results – the ability of the system itself to determine where and at what time to show your ad. In each of these formats, we recommend testing both video and graphic creatives. Most studies suggest that users perceive video better, but it may turn out differently in your case, so you need to set aside some test period at the start to evaluate performance.

Should you promote your destination using only digital marketing tools, or enhance the strategy with offline advertising?

Offline promotion, TV or out-of-home advertising, will improve brand awareness and increase audience reach, attracting the users who might have missed online ads. It is essential to determine the places for advertising offline, which will be relevant to the portrait of the desired target audience.

How to set proper KPIs for evaluating the performance of destination marketing campaigns?

Here are the most common KPIs for destination marketing campaigns:

• Customer inquiries;
• Newsletter subscription;
• Video views;
• Other conversions actions on site

How does it work in practice?

Promodo completed a project providing destination marketing services for the Georgian National Tourism Administration to promote tourism in Georgia. Our aim was marketing the country and increase the number of tourists choosing this destination. We took the data provided by the Georgian National Tourism Administration and made a deep analysis of the target audience and their needs. ‍

The results we obtained were as follows:

We answered the question “Who is our target audience?” – and found out that tourists aged 25-54 make 75.4% of all the tourists (which meant our target audience most likely use the Internet and social networks).

With whom do they travel? According to our research, 49.1% are independent travellers and 70% of travellers organised their trips by themselves (which meant they used testimonials services and Google or Yandex search).

What are they going to do? 39.5% were supposed to come to Georgia for tourism and recreation (which meant they are either for the first time in Georgia or would like to discover more attractions, i.e. they would like to see the video or pictures of those attractions).

What do they want to receive? How much are they going to spend? (this information was helpful in order to use proper keywords for the ads). Based on the analysis we created the online marketing strategy to promote Georgia. To obtain the best results and meet the needs of our target audience, we used the Vkontakte social network, YouTube channel, and two of the most popular search engines in the targeted region(Google and Yandex).

For Google and Yandex, we used the following kinds of ads:

As for the Vkontakte social network, we targeted our ads to travellers, interested in leisure, health and culture, and those, who were the members of specific thematic communities (travels, air tickets, travel deals etc.). As a result, the campaign has shown a growth of interest in Georgia as a travel destination (see the Google Trends results).

We were also increased in the number of tourists by 14% during the campaign period (summer 2015) and received high involvement of users through the tools used.

Read the detailed case study on How we Promoted Georgia as a Tourist Country – here .

PPC Team Lead at Promodo

Serhiy has been engaged in PPC for more than 8 years.

Worked with many top Ukrainian clients.

Now manages his own team.

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Chapter 8. Services Marketing

8.1 The Evolution of Marketing

Marketing is a continuous, sequential process through which management plans, researches, implements, controls, and evaluates activities designed to satisfy the customers’ needs and wants, and meet the organization’s objectives. According to Morrison (2010), services marketing “is a concept based on a recognition of the uniqueness of all services; it is a branch of marketing that specifically applies to the service industries” (p. 767). In general, the aims of marketing are to “create value for customers,” “build strong relationships” and “capture value from customers in return” (Kotler, Armstrong, Trifts, & Cunningham, 2014, p. 2).

Marketing in the tourism and hospitality industry requires an understanding of the differences between marketing goods, services, and experiences. To be successful in tourism marketing, organizations need to understand the unique characteristics of their tourism experiences, the motivations and behaviours of travelling consumers, and the fundamental differences between marketing goods, services, and experiences.

Until the 1930s, the primary objective of businesses was manufacturing, with little thought given to sales or marketing. In the 1930s, a focus on sales became more important; technological advances meant that multiple companies could produce similar goods, creating increased competition. Even as companies began to understand the importance of sales, the needs and wants of the customer remained a secondary consideration (Morrison, 2010).

In 1944, the first television commercial, for Bulova watches, reached 4,000 sets (Davis, 2013). The decades that followed, the 1950s and 1960s, are known as an era when marketing began to truly take off, with the number of mediums expanding and TV ad spending going from 5% of total TV revenues in 1953 to 15% just one year later (Davis, 2013).

The era from approximately 1950 to around 1970 was known as a time of marketing orientation (Morrison, 2010). Customers had more choice in product, which required companies to shift focus to ensure that consumers knew how their products matched specific needs. This was also the time when quality of service and customer satisfaction became part of organizational strategy. We began to see companies develop internal marketing departments, and in the 1960s, the first full-service advertising agencies began to emerge.

Societal marketing emerged in the 1970s when organizations began to recognize their place in society and their responsibility to citizens (or at least the appearance thereof). This change is demonstrated, for example, by natural resource extraction companies supporting environmental management issues and implementing more transparent policies. This decade saw the emergence of media we are familiar with today (the first hand-held mobile phone was launched in 1973) and the decline of traditional marketing through vehicles such as print; the latter evidenced by the closure of LIFE Magazine in 1972 amid complaints that TV advertising was too difficult to compete with (Davis, 2013).

The 1990s ushered in the start of the online marketing era. E-commerce (electronic commerce) revolutionized every industry, perhaps impacting the travel industry most of all. Tourism and hospitality service providers began making use of this technology to optimize marketing to consumers; manage reservations; facilitate transactions; partner and package itineraries; provide (multiple) customer feedback channels; collect, mine, analyze, and sell data; and automate functions. The marketing opportunities of this era appeared limitless and paved the way for the maturation of social media marketing and a number of other marketing shifts including the increased use of big data, mobile technology, and short- and long-form video content in marketing, as well as a more empowered and engaged consumer. Table 8.1 summarizes the evolution of marketing over the last century and beyond.

Typically, the progression of marketing in tourism and hospitality has been 10 to 20 years behind other sectors. Some in the industry attribute this to the traditional career path in the tourism and hospitality industry where managers and executives worked their way up the ranks (e.g., from bellhop to general manager) rather than through a post-secondary business education that is more the norm today. It was previously commonly believed that to be a leader in this industry one had to understand the operations inside-out, so training and development of managers was based on technical and functional capabilities, rather than marketing savvy. And, as we’ll learn next, marketing services and experiences is distinct and sometimes more challenging than marketing goods. For these reasons, most businesses in the industry have been developing marketing skills for only about 30 years (Morrison, 2010).

Long Descriptions

Figure 8.1 long description: A black-and-white advertisement. A man holds up a calculator looking skeptical. He says, “Are you kidding me? A big double bed, television, air conditioning, and only $12.95 a night? It doesn’t compute.” A hotel staff member stands behind him looking pleased and says, “Please, sir. Economy is our first name.” At the bottom of the ad, it says, “Econo-Travel: Motor Hotels and Lodges. Economy is our first name.” [Return to Figure 8.1]

A continuous, sequential process through which management plans, researches, implements, controls, and evaluates activities designed to satisfy the customers’ needs and wants, and its own organization’s objectives.

Marketing that specifically applies to services such as those provided by the tourism and hospitality industries, differs from the marketing of goods.

The understanding that a company needs to engage with its markets in order to refine its products and services, and promotional efforts.

Marketing that recognizes a company's place in society and its responsibility to citizens (or at least the appearance thereof).

Electronic commerce; performing business transactions online while collecting rich data about consumers.

Introduction to Tourism and Hospitality in BC - 2nd Edition Copyright © 2015, 2020, 2021 by Morgan Westcott and Wendy Anderson, Eds is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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• The Evolution of Tourism Marketing

by SarahB | Sep 1, 2022 | General

Major developments in the digital world have changed how tourism marketing works. 

The highest purpose of tourism marketing is to strengthen a region’s economy by promoting local businesses and experiences. Campaigns targeted to tourists can help local companies — as well as the cities and towns they are based in — stand out from the competition, attract new visitors/customers, and generate brand awareness. But tourism-related businesses often struggle to keep up with the best practices for tourism marketing amid the race to meet the ever-changing needs of customers.

To help you understand the latest challenges and opportunities for businesses that rely on tourists, we have put together this guide to the evolution of tourism marketing.

1. The Explosion of Social Media 

Some of the biggest social platforms came online in the early 2000s — Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, etc. — and blew marketing wide open as an industry in general. 

And when socially focused digital booking systems like Airbnb and VRBO came onto the tourism scene, the tourism marketing ecosystem changed forever when it came to short-term rentals. Today, as many cities tighten restrictions on these types of rentals, and as remote work becomes more commonplace, some destinations find they are increasing the number of long-term rentals. 

Websites like Airbnb also added experiences to their list of offerings, not just lodging. More people and brands will be able to market products and services through these types of websites as this practice continues and increases. 

2. Artificial Intelligence

Search engines and social media feeds began using artificial intelligence and machine learning, which changed how people received info across the web. One of the biggest changes happened in 2015 when Google incorporated its first machine learning, RankBrain, into Google’s algorithms. By 2016 the RankBrain algorithm was expanded to include all queries and searches happening on Google.

Travel companies can now easily track customer reviews, comments on social media, and other mentions about the company. AI can analyze online guest reviews and quickly respond to negative feedback to ensure a positive online presence and brand reputation.

Today, voice search is the new evolution of AI. More than 20% of people use voice search on a weekly basis, whether it’s to order products online, get directions, or look up a fact — and that number is expected to grow.

Consumers expect brands, retailers, and destinations to understand what they want and when they want it. If they don’t, they might lose out on those consumers.

3. Digital Advertising 

Marketers were able to get very specific when it came to targeting their digital ads on social media and beyond. By targeting interests, behaviors, and demographics that were unique to your tourist destination, you could capture the exact right audience and compel them to visit. 

Advertising quickly became one of the most important factors to help the tourism industry generate visitors from both the local and international marketplace. According to data from Expedia Group Media Solutions , 78% of consumers said they’ve made a travel choice based on promotions or ads that they felt represented them through messaging or visuals.

4. Geolocation

Smartphone and mobile technology made it possible for travelers to plan their trips any time they wanted. The advancement of geolocation meant people could quickly explore what is right outside their door — a huge benefit for tourism marketing.

According to a Google survey from December 2020, searches for “available near me” grew globally by more than 100% since 2019. In 2021, these searches were up another 60% according to SearchEngineLand . The top categories for those searches were: 

• Entertainment (56%)
• Banking (50%)
• Apparel (41%)
• Personal Care (38%)

5. The COVID-19 Pandemic 

The pandemic has created a world that is far less predictable, which has resulted in many people reevaluating their priorities. Not only did traveler behavior and priorities change, but tourism organizations and businesses began to evaluate the brand values that they stand for. Regions also started to think more deeply about how tourism impacts local residents. It has become even more important that tourism dollars benefit the communities that are directly impacted by tourism. 

According to the Booking.com 2021 Sustainable Travel Report :

• 46% of Americans have changed their views on sustainable travel because of the pandemic.
• 74% of Americans believe increasing cultural understanding and preserving cultural heritage is crucial.
• 65% of Americans will shy away from traditionally popular destinations and attractions to more evenly spread the economic benefits of tourism to less-visited communities.

Tourism marketing is unlike any other industry. It’s complex, diverse, challenging, and unpredictable. Tourism-related businesses often find it difficult to stay alive because it requires the ability to remain in tune with the ever-changing desires and needs of the customers, as well as the ever-changing landscape of the industry itself. 

Asheville is the ultimate tourism success story in the southeast, and we have hands-on experience growing our mountain town to where it is today. Learn more at the DIY Tourism and Local Marketing Workshop on November 14-15. Buy your ticket today.

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Introduction: Travel and Tourism: An Industry Is Born in Four Milestones

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UNWTO. 2019. European Union Tourism Trends report 2019.

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Boschetto Doorly, V. (2020). Introduction: Travel and Tourism: An Industry Is Born in Four Milestones. In: Megatrends Defining the Future of Tourism. Anticipation Science, vol 6. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48626-6_1

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Introductory Tourism

Introduction [ edit | edit source ].

Tourism is travel for pleasure; also the theory and practice of touring, the business of attracting, accommodating, and entertaining tourists, and the business of operating tours. Tourism may be international, or within the traveler's country. The World Tourism Organization defines tourism more generally, in terms which go "beyond the common perception of tourism as being limited to holiday activity only ", as people "traveling to and staying in places outside their usual environment for not more than one consecutive year for leisure, business and other purposes". Tourism is the act of travel for predominantly recreational or leisure purposes, and also refers to the provision of services in support of this act. According to the World Tourism Organization, tourists are people who "travel and stay in places outside their usual environment for not more than one consecutive year for leisure, business and other purposes not related to the exercise of an activity remunerated from within the place visited".

Tourism, however long its incident duration, has become an extremely popular, global activity. In 2004, there were over 763 million international tourist arrivals.[1]

As a service industry, tourism has numerous tangible and intangible elements. Major tangible elements include transportation, accommodation, and other components of a hospitality industry. Major intangible elements relate to the purpose or motivation for becoming a tourist, such as rest, relaxation, the opportunity to meet new people and experience other cultures, or simply to do something different and have an adventure.

Tourism is vital for many countries, due to the income generated by the consumption of goods and services by tourists, the taxes levied on businesses in the tourism industry, and the opportunity for employment and economic advancement by working in the industry. For these reasons NGOs and government agencies may sometimes promote a specific region as a tourist destination, and support the development of a tourism industry in that area. The contemporary phenomenon of mass tourism may sometimes result in overdevelopment, however alternative forms of tourism such as ecotourism seek to avoid such outcomes by pursuing tourism in a sustainable way.

The terms tourism and travel are sometimes used interchangeably. In this context travel has a similar definition to tourism, but implies a more purposeful journey. The terms tourism and tourist are sometimes used pejoratively to imply a shallow interest in the cultures or locations visited by tourists.

One of the earliest definitions of tourism was provided by the Austrian economist Hermann Von Schullard in 1910, who defined it as, "sum total of operators, mainly of an economic nature, which directly relate to the entry, stay and movement of foreigners inside and outside a certain country, city or a region."

Hunziker and Krapf, in 1941, defined tourism as "the sum of the phenomena and relationships arising from the travel and stay of non-residents, in so far as they do not lead to permanent residence and are not connected with any earning activity."[2]

In 1976 Tourism Society of England defined it as "Tourism is the temporary, short-term movement of people to destination outside the places where they normally live and work and their activities during the stay at each destination. It includes movements for all purposes."

In 1981 International Association of Scientific Experts in Tourism defined Tourism in terms of particular activities selected by choice and undertaken outside the home environment.

United Nations definition [ edit | edit source ]

United Nations classified 3 forms of tourism in 1994 in its Recommendations on Tourism Statistics as follows:

• Domestic tourism, involving residents of the given country traveling only within this country;
• Inbound tourism, involving non-residents traveling in the given country;
• Outbound tourism, involving residents traveling in another country.

UN also derived different categories of tourism by combining the 3 basic forms of tourism:

• Internal tourism, which comprises domestic tourism and inbound tourism;
• National tourism, which comprises domestic tourism and outbound tourism;
• International tourism, which consists of inbound tourism and outbound tourism.

New definition [ edit | edit source ]

Intrabound tourism is a new academic terminology coined by the Korea Tourism Organization and widely accepted in Korea. Intrabound tourism differs from ‘domestic tourism’ in that the former is more concerned with making and implementation of national tourism policies in consideration of the tourism ecosystem consisting of inbound, outbound and intrabound tourism.

Entering into 21st century, the tourism industry has undergone a paradigm shift form the promotion of inbound tourism to the promotion of intrabound tourism since many countries are experiencing a tough competition for inbound tourists. Also realizing that it is impossible to advance the inbound tourism in the absence of active intrabound tourism, national policy makers have shifted their policy priority onto the promotion of intrabound tourism such as the promotion of local tourism to contribute to the local economy.

Examples of such policies are “See America,” “Getting Going Canada,” and “See Korea Campaign”. Taking a Korean case as an example, Korea Tourism Organization has recently launched a nation-wide campaign to promote intrabound tourism, named “Guseok Guseok, literally meaning corner to corner.

Prerequisites of tourism [ edit | edit source ]

Before people are able to experience tourism they usually need at least:

• disposable income, i.e. money to spend on non-essentials
• leisure time
• tourism infrastructure, such as transport and accommodation

Individually, sufficient health is also a condition, and of course the inclination to travel. Furthermore, in some countries there are legal restrictions on travelling, especially abroad. Certain states with strong governmental control over the lives of citizens (notably established Communist states) may restrict foreign travel only to trustworthy citizens. The United States prohibits its citizens from traveling to some countries, for example, Cuba. Tourism is travel for pleasure; also the theory and practice of touring, the business of attracting, accommodating, and entertaining tourists, and the business of operating tours. Tourism may be international, or within the traveler's country. The World Tourism Organization defines tourism more generally, in terms which go "beyond the common perception of tourism as being limited to holiday activity only ", as people "traveling to and staying in places outside their usual environment for not more than one consecutive year for leisure, business and other purposes". Tourism is the act of travel for predominantly recreational or leisure purposes, and also refers to the provision of services in support of this act. According to the World Tourism Organization, tourists are people who "travel and stay in places outside their usual environment for not more than one consecutive year for leisure, business and other purposes not related to the exercise of an activity remunerated from within the place visited".

History of Tourism [ edit | edit source ]

The tourism business is at least 2,000 years old. It began when wealthy citizens of ancient Rome, deciding they would rather spend their summers away from the city, took trips to the countryside and the coast.

A tourist industry soon sprang up to cater for the Romans’ travel and accommodation needs, and for a while it thrived. But Roman tourism ended with its empire, and for hundreds of years the turbulent economic, social and military situation in Europe made frequent, safe travel out of the question.

During the medieval era, however, tourism again appeared thanks to a growing interest in pilgrimages. The organisers arranged the tourism basics of itineraries and places to eat and sleep. And from records such as Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, it’s evident that many pilgrims were keen to relax and enjoy themselves as well as visit a holy shrine. In fact it’s from the Old English word hāligdæg (holy day) that “holiday” derives.

But it was two other factors hundreds of years later that encouraged the start of more widespread and regular tourism: health and culture. Those who could afford to do so began to visit the spa and seaside towns of eighteenth century Europe to benefit from the spring waters and fresh air. Others, most notably the English, took educational holidays to countries such as Italy with the intention of studying paintings, sculptures and architecture, and visiting historical sites.

Straightforward leisure tourism took hold when industrialisation across Europe gave rise to an affluent middle class with an increasing amount of free time. Entrepreneurs started to build tourist hotels with an infrastructure of roads, carriages and ferries. Tourism began to take shape as an international industry.

The industry was popular and steadily successful from the early nineteenth century. But for the most part, it was expensive and limited to a small number of locations. Then everything suddenly changed. In the 1960s, a growing number of people had disposable incomes, and with this extra money came a desire for a different lifestyle. At the same time, reasonably-priced commercial aircraft were able to carry passengers to and from any airport in the world.

Mass tourism had arrived, and with it there came an extraordinary growth in facilities. Fishing villages on the southern coast of Spain, for instance, became resorts that were household names. Elsewhere, business people capitalised on the demand for tourist attractions and constructed leisure and theme parks.

The driving force behind these rapid developments was cash. In 2006, the international tourism receipts for the three most popular destinations – France, Spain and the United States – totalled $179.7 billion. The number of visitors who contributed this sum was 188.7 million.

With figures such as these, many countries around the globe work hard to encourage travellers to visit them. The result in recent years is the boom in long haul flights to destinations that can supply tourists with sun almost every week of the year.

Unfortunately, it’s this scramble to grab a share of the tourist industry that is sometimes damaging environments unable to sustain large numbers of visitors. There are also concerns about the pollution generated by the ever-rising volume of tourist flights, cruise ships and road traffic. And on top of these problems are increasing fuel costs; the demise of established resorts that have over-expanded; fluctuating exchange rates for currencies; and the credit crunch.

The tourism industry will no doubt adapt to new demands and circumstances. But despite some optimistic predictions from tourism agencies for its continued growth, this business may well find that its most successful era, for the time being anyway, is past.

Health tourism & leisure travel [ edit | edit source ]

The history of European tourism can perhaps be said to originate with the medieval pilgrimage. Although undertaken primarily for religious reasons, the pilgrims in the Canterbury Tales quite clearly saw the experience as a kind of holiday (the term itself being derived from the 'holy day' leisure activities). Pilgrimages created a variety of tourist aspects that still exist - bringing back souvenirs, obtaining credit with foreign banks (in medieval times utilising international networks established by Jews and Lombards), and making use of space available on existing forms of transport (such as the use of medieval English wine ships bound for Vigo by pilgrims to Santiago De Compostela). Pilgrimages are still important in modern tourism - such as to Lourdes or Knock in Ireland. But there are modern equivalents - Graceland and the grave of Jim Morrison in Père Lachaise Cemetery.

During the seventeenth century, it became fashionable in England to undertake a Grand Tour. The sons of the nobility and gentry were sent upon an extended tour of Europe as an educational experience. The eighteenth century was the golden age of the Grand Tour, and many of the fashionable visitors were painted at Rome by Pompeo Batoni. A modern equivalent of the Grand Tour is the phenomenon of the backpacker, although cultural holidays, such as those offered by Swann-Hellenic, are also important.

Health tourism has always existed, but it was not until the eighteenth century that it became important. In England, it was associated with spas, places with supposedly health-giving mineral waters, treating diseases from gout to liver disorders and bronchitis. Bath was the most fashionable resort, but Buxton, Harrogate, and Tunbridge Wells, amongst others, also flourished. Of course, people visited these places for the balls and other entertainments, just as much as 'the waters'. Continental Spas such as Karlsbad attracted many fashionable travellers by the nineteenth century.

It could be argued that Britain was the home of the seaside holiday. In travelling to the coast, the population was following in the steps of Royalty. King George III made regular visits to Weymouth when in poor health. At the time, a number of doctors argued the benefits of bathing in sea water, and sea bathing as a widespread practice was popularised by the Prince Regent (later George IV), who frequented Brighton for this purpose.

Leisure travel was associated with the industrialization of United Kingdom – the first European country to promote leisure time to the increasing industrial population. Initially, this applied to the owners of the machinery of production, the economic oligarchy, the factory owners, and the traders. These comprised the new middle class. Cox & Kings were the first official travel company to be formed in 1758. Later, the working class could take advantage of leisure time.

The British origin of this new industry is reflected in many place names. At Nice, one of the first and best-established holiday resorts on the French Riviera, the long esplanade along the seafront is known to this day as the Promenade des Anglais; in many other historic resorts in continental Europe, old well-established palace hotels have names like the Hotel Bristol, the Hotel Carlton or the Hotel Majestic - reflecting the dominance of English customers.

Winter tourism [ edit | edit source ]

Winter sports were largely invented by the British leisured classes, initially at the Swiss village of Zermatt (Valais), and St Moritz in 1864. The first packaged winter sports holidays took place in 1902 at Adelboden, Switzerland. Winter sports were a natural answer for a leisured class looking for amusement during the coldest season.

Organized sport was well established in Britain before it reached other countries. The vocabulary of sport bears witness to this: rugby, football, and boxing all originated in Britain, and even tennis, originally a French sport, was formalized and codified by the British, who hosted the first national championship in the nineteenth century, at Wimbledon.

Mass travel [ edit | edit source ]

Mass travel could only develop with two crucial features:

• improvements in technology allowed the transport of large numbers of people in a short space of time to places of leisure interest, and
• greater numbers of people began to enjoy the benefits of leisure time.

The pioneer of modern mass tourism was Thomas Cook who, on 5 July 1841, organized the first package tour in history. He arranged for the rail company to charge one shilling per person for a group of 570 temperance campaigners from Leicester to a rally in Loughborough, eleven miles away. Cook was paid a share of the fares actually charged to the passengers, as the railway tickets, being legal contracts between company and passenger, could not have been issued at his own price. There had been railway excursions before, but this one included entrance to an entertainment held in private grounds, rail tickets and food for the train journey. Cook immediately saw the potential of a convenient 'off the peg' holiday product in which everything was included in one cost. He organised packages inclusive of accommodation for the Great Exhibition, and afterwards pioneered package holidays in both Britain (particularly in Scotland) and on the European continent (where Paris and the Alps were the most popular destinations).

He was soon followed by others (the Polytechnic Touring Association, Dean and Dawson etc.), with the result that the tourist industry developed rapidly in late Victorian Britain. Initially it was supported by the growing middle classes, who had time off from their work, and who could afford the luxury of travel and possibly even staying for periods of time in boarding houses.

The Bank Holidays Act 1871 introduced a statutory right for workers to take holidays, even if they were not paid at the time. By the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the tradition of the working class holiday had become firmly established in Britain. These were largely focussed upon the seaside resorts.

The spread of the railway network in the nineteenth century resulted in the growth of Britain's seaside towns by bringing them within easy distance of Britain's urban centres. Blackpool was created by the construction of a line to Fleetwood, and some resorts were promoted by the railway companies themselves - Morecambe by the Midland Railway and Cleethorpes by the Great Central Railway. Other resorts included Scarborough in Yorkshire, servicing Leeds and Bradford; Weston-super-Mare in Somerset, catering for the inhabitants of Bristol; and Skegness, patronised by the residents of the industrial East Midlands. The cockneys of London flocked to Southend-on-Sea, mainly by Thames Steamer, and the South Coast resorts such as Broadstairs, Brighton, and Eastbourne were only a train ride away, with others further afield such as Bournemouth, Bognor Regis and Weymouth.

For a century, domestic tourism was the norm, with foreign travel being reserved for the rich or the culturally curious. A number of inland destinations, such as the English Lake District, and Snowdonia appealed to those who liked the countryside and fine scenery. The holiday camp began to appear in the 1930s, but this phenomenon really expanded in the post-war period. Butlins and Pontins set this trend, but their popularity waned with the rise of overseas package tours and the increasing comforts to which visitors became accustomed at home. Towards the end of the 20th century this market has been revived by the upmarket inland resorts of Dutch company Center Parcs.

Cox & Co, the forebear of Cox & Kings were in existence from 1758 largely entwined with the travel arrangements for the British Army serving around the Empire. While acting as 'agents' for various regiments, they organised the payment, provision, clothing and travel arrangements for members of the armed forces. In the 19th century their network of offices contained a banking and also travel department. The company became heavily involved with affairs in India and its Shipping Agency had offices in France and the Middle East.

Other phenomena that helped develop the travel industry were paid holidays:

• 1.5 million manual workers in Britain had paid holidays by 1925
• 11 million by 1939 (30% of the population in families with paid holidays)

In the USA, the first great seaside resort, in the European style, was Atlantic City, New Jersey.

In continental Europe, early resorts included Ostend (for the people of Brussels), and Boulogne-sur-Mer (Pas-de-Calais) and Deauville (Calvados) (for Parisians).

International mass tourism [ edit | edit source ]

Increasing speed on railways meant that the tourist industry could develop internationally.

To this may be added the development of sea travel. By 1901, the number of people crossing the English Channel from England to France or Belgium had passed 0.5 million per year. Shipping companies were anxious to fill cabin space that was under utilised. For example, P&O found that the majority of their passengers for India and the Far East joined the ship at Marseilles. Consequently, they marketed holidays based upon sea trips from London to Lisbon and Gibraltar. Other companies diverted their older ships to operate cruises in the summer months.

However, the real age of international mass travel began with the growth of air travel after World War Two. In the immediate post-war period, there was a surplus of transport aircraft, such as the popular and reliable Douglas Dakota, and a number of ex military pilots ready to fly them. They were available for charter flights, and tour operators began to use them for European destinations, such as Paris and Ostend.

Vladimir Raitz pioneered modern package tourism when on 20 May 1950 his recently founded company, Horizon, provided arrangements for a two-week holiday in Corsica. For an all inclusive price of £32.10s.-, holiday makers could sleep under canvas, sample local wines and eat a meal containing meat twice a day - this was especially attractive due to the continuing austerity measures in post-war United Kingdom. Within ten years, his company had started mass tourism to Palma (1952), Lourdes (1953), Costa Brava (1954), Sardinia (1954), Minorca (1955), Porto (1956), Costa Blanca (1957) and Costa del Sol (1959).

However it was with cheap air travel in combination with the package tour that international mass tourism developed. The postwar introduction of an international system of airline regulation was another important factor. The bilateral agreements at the heart of the system fixed seat prices, and airlines could not fill blocks of empty seats on underused flights by discounting. But if they were purchased by a tour operator and hidden within the price of an inclusive holiday package, it would be difficult to prove that discounting had taken place - even though it was obvious that it had! This was the origin of the modern mass package tour.

These developments coincided with a significant increase in the standard of living in Britain. At the end of the 1950s, Harold Macmillan could say "you've never had it so good."

Another significant development also happened at the end of this decade. The devaluation of the Spanish peseta made Spain appear a particularly attractive destination. The cheapness of the cost of living attracted increasing numbers of visitors. Mass package tourism has at times been an exploitative process, in which tour operators in a country with a high standard of living make use of development opportunities and low operating costs in a country with a lower standard of living. However, as witness the development of many tourist areas in previously poor parts of the world, and the concomitant rise in standards of living, when there is equality of bargaining power, both parties can gain economic benefits from this arrangement.

Spain and the Balearic Islands became major tourist destinations, and development probably peaked in the 1980s. At the same time, British tour operators developed the Algarve in Portugal. The continuing search for new, cheaper, destinations spread mass tourism to the Greek Islands, Italy, Tunisia, Morocco, parts of the coast of Turkey, and more recently Croatia.

For the worker living in greater London, Venice today is almost as accessible as Brighton was 100 years ago. Consequently, the British seaside resort experienced a marked decline from the 1970s onwards. Some, such as New Brighton have disappeared. Others have reinvented themselves, and now cater to daytrippers and the weekend break market.

key components of the Travel and Tourism [ edit | edit source ]

Components of travel and tourism the definition of Travel. Travel is changing location using different types of transport. People can travel by Road, Air,Sea,Rail The definition of tourism. Tourism is the temporary short term movement of people to destination outside the place they normally live or work. For example young couple travel to New York visit friends. Types of tourism. Tourism can be divided into three categories: Domestic tourism This is when people take holidays, short breaks and day trips in they own country e.g. couple from Manchester goes to visit Birmingham for one week. Inbound tourism .This is when people enter the country from their own country of origin or another country which is not their home. e.g. students from Spain comes to London visit the city. Outbound tourism. This is when people travel away from the country where they normally live. e.g. family from New quay decide to give London a miss this year a take two weeks holiday in Italy The Components of Travel and Tourism Travel and tourism it’s made up of different components which work together to provide holidays and other travel products to clients. These are most important components in tourism industry

• Accommodation
• Attractions
• Travel agents
• Tour operators
• Ancillary services
• Trade association and regulatory bodies
• Tourism development and promotions Accommodation. Accommodation is one of the main sector in travel and tourism.

The components of travel and tourism can be broadly divided into six key areas.

A travel agent provides information to the people on various travel destinations, advises them of available holiday packages to suit their tastes and budget and chart their travel plan. He would generally sell the travel associated products like currency exchange, car rentals, insurance etc.

2. Tour Operators: Tour operators offer holiday packages which comprise of 1. Travel like by rail, road or air. 2. Accommodation like hotels, resorts, apartments, guesthouses 3. Travel services like airport pick and drop, sightseeing, excursions etc. These tour operators may be the wholesale operators who operate tours only through retail travel agencies or they may be direct sell operators who market their product directly to the public.

3. Accommodation (Lodging and Catering): This components consists of those who provide accommodation to the people in the form of hotels, resorts, apartments, camps, guest houses etc. The accommodation may be marketed individually or through the tour operators in the form of package. Direct marketing may require huge costs on advertisement and selling through a tour operator guarantees the occupancy rate throughout a holiday season. These service providers also take care of the catering needs of the people b providing them huge cafeterias, various fast food outlets in house or in the form of a Galleria.

4. Various Kinds of Transport: Transport providers are those operating any major form of transport. They could be airlines, cruise lines, car rentals, and rail companies. A tourist’s choice of transport would depend on the travel budget, destination, time, purpose of the tour, and convenience to the point of destination.

5, Information & Guiding: (Ancillary services) The tourist information and guidance providers include a number of service providers such as those offering insurance, recreational, communication, and banking services; government agencies; tour guides; industry associations; packaging agents; ticketing agents; and holiday sellers.

6. Tourist Attractions: The principle of attraction is to establish the need for the attraction in a particular location to invite more footfall. It may be a huge theme park, a museum, a gallery, a heritage building, an educational center etc. Many countries see the need to have one or more visitor attraction in the area to widen their appeal and attract huge potential tourist.

These bodies also making bridges between the traders and visitors (travellers). • Trade association and regulatory bodies • Tourism development and promotions Accommodation. Accommodation is one of the main sector in travel and tourism.

Those organisations interrelate to produce and promote travel products and services. Also some organisations are independent of other such as visitor attractions including local heritage Chain of Distribution Chain of distribution show the way, product such as for example holidays are distributed from producer to customers, often via wholesalers and retailers. PRINCIPALS that is Hotel, Airlines, and other Transport companies WHOLESALERS Tour Operators RETAILERS Travel Agencies CUSTOMERS Types of Integration. Integration in the travel and tourism industry occurs when one company owns or controls more than one part of distribution process. There are two types of integration. • Horizontal Integration • Vertical Integration Horizontal Integration is when the organisation owns two or more companies on the same level of the distribution chain. e.g. First Choice Holidays owns a number of tour operating brands like First Choice Holiday or Sovereign Vertical Integration is when the company integrate at the different levels of the distribution chain. E.g. tour operator work with airline such as First Choice as it is a tour operator which also has an airline named First Choice Airways. AIRLINE First Choice TOUR OPERATOR First Choice Holiday TRAVEL AGENCY First Choice Travel Shops Travel Infrastructure- travel infrastructure is the networks of the links between motorways, airports, sea ports and railway stations which transport the passengers to a destinations.

Types of Tourism [ edit | edit source ]

.Traveling is one effective way to see the world, experience new cultures and meet new people at the same time. For many tourists, however, traveling accomplishes many other purposes that don’t even have anything to do with the joy of visiting a new place. This is why there are many different types of tourism that explain why tourists choose a particular destination and the things that they expect to do when they are there.

Perhaps the most common type of tourism is what most people associate with traveling: Recreation tourism. This is when people go to a place that is very different from their regular day-to-day life to relax and have fun. Beaches, theme parks and camp grounds are often the most common places frequented by recreational tourists. If the objective of one’s visit to a particular place is to get to know its history and culture then this type of tourism is known as cultural tourism. Tourists may visit different landmarks of a particular country or they may simply opt to focus on just one area. They may also attend festivals and ceremonies in order to gain a better understanding of the people, their beliefs and their practices.

For tourists who want to see wildlife or bask in the joy of just being in the midst of nature, nature tourism is the answer. Ecotourism and nature treks are all part of this kind of tourism. Bird watching, for example, is one activity that nature tourists are fond of doing. What marks this kind of tourism is that it is environmentally responsible, has low impact and advantageous to the local community. Many people today are stressed out in the corporate rat race and in need of rejuvenation. Thus, they go on trips that refresh their souls and spirits. This is called pleasure tourism and usually includes yoga workshops and detox vacations, among others. Others, however, de-stress by engaging in a particular sport. Called sports tourism, travelers here target places which are known for a particular sporting facility. Skiing, for example, is a type of sports tourism. Also included in this category are those who go to a destination to experience a sports spectacle such as the Olympics, FIFA World Cup and others.

Religious tourism is another type of tourism where people go to a religious location or locations to follow the footsteps of their founder or to attend a religious ceremony. Catholics, for example, go on pilgrimages in the Holy Land to experience the paths where Jesus walked.

Medical or health tourism is a relatively new type of tourist activity where the main focus of the travel is improving one’s health, physical appearance or fitness. For instance, certain countries promote the expertise of their doctors and surgeons in the field of cosmetic surgery and invite foreigners to have their liposuction, facelift, nose lift and other forms of cosmetic procedures to be done there. Medical tourism also incorporates aspects of recreation tourism where the patient goes to a relaxing getaway to recover from the procedure.

Adventure tourism is another type of tourism that is catered for those who want to do more than just visit regular tourist sites. These kinds of trips involve challenging activities like rock climbing, mountain climbing and wild water rafting.

It should be noted that there are no strict delineations when tourists go on their trips. These kinds of tourism often overlap so it’s not unusual for travelers to experience more than one type of tourism in one vacation.

Recent developments [ edit | edit source ]

There has been a discernible upmarket trend in tourism over the last few decades, especially in Europe where international travel for short breaks is commonplace. Tourists have higher levels of disposable income and greater leisure time. They are also better educated and have more sophisticated tastes. There is now a demand for a better quality product in many quarters. This has resulted in the following trends:-

• The old 'sun, sea, and sand' mass market has fragmented. People want more specialised versions of it, such as 'Club 18 -30', quieter resorts with select hotels, self-catering, etc.
• People are taking second holidays in the form of short breaks/city breaks, ranging from British and European cities to country hotels.
• There has been a growth in niche markets catering for special interests or activities, including growth of destination hotels.

The developments in technology and transport infrastructure (particularly the advent of jumbo jets) have placed some types of holiday in the affordable mainstream:-

• The development of a mass cruise holiday market.
• The advent of affordable holidays to long-haul destinations such as Thailand or Kenya.
• The phenomenon of the low budget airline, utilising a new generation of small regional airports.

There have also been changes in lifestyle, which may call into question the current definitions of tourism. Some people (particularly the 45+ and retired) may be adopting a tourism lifestyle, living as a tourist all the year round - eating out several times a week, going to the theatre, daytripping, and indulging in short breaks several times a year.

Much of this results in impulse purchasing. This is facilitated by internet purchasing of tourism products. Some sites have now started to offer dynamic packaging, in which an inclusive price is quoted for a tailor- made package requested by the customer upon impulse.

There have been a few setbacks in tourism, such as the September 11, 2001 attacks and terrorist threats to tourist destinations such as Bali and European cities. Some of the tourist destinations, including the Costa del Sol, the Baleares and Cancún have lost popularity due to shifting tastes. In this context, the excessive building and environmental destruction often associated with traditional "sun and beach" tourism may contribute to a destination's saturation and subsequent decline. This appears to be the case with Spain's Costa Brava, a byword for this kind of tourism in the 1960s and 1970s. With only 11% of the Costa Brava now unblemished by low-quality development (Greenpeace Spain's figure), the destination now faces a crisis in its tourist industry.

Sustainable tourism is becoming more popular as people start to realize the devastating effects tourism can have on communities.

Receptive tourism is now growing at a very rapid rate in many developing countries, where it is often the most important economic activity in local GDP.

In recent years, second holidays or vacations have become more popular as people's discretionary income increases. Typical combinations are a package to the typical mass tourist resort, with a winter skiing holiday or weekend break to a city or national park.

On December 26, 2004 a tsunami, caused by the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake hit Asian countries bordering the Indian Ocean, and also the Maldives. Tens of thousands of lives were lost, and many tourists died. This, together with the vast clean-up operation in place, has stopped or severely hampered tourism to the area.

Special forms of tourism [ edit | edit source ]

For the past few decades other forms of tourism, also known as niche tourism, have been becoming more popular, particularly:

• Adventure tourism: tourism involving travel in rugged regions, or adventurous sports such as mountaineering and hiking (tramping).
• Agritourism: farm based tourism, helping to support the local agricultural economy.
• Ancestry tourism: (also known as genealogy tourism) is the travel with the aim of tracing one's ancestry, visiting the birth places of these ancestors and sometimes getting to know distant family.
• Armchair tourism and virtual tourism: not travelling physically, but exploring the world through internet, books, TV, etc.
• Audio tourism: includes audio walking tours and other audio guided forms of tourism including museum audio guides and audio travel books.
• Bookstore Tourism is a grassroots effort to support independent bookstores by promoting them as a travel destination.
• Creative Tourism is a new form of tourism that allows visitors to develop their creative potential, and get closer to local people, through informal participation in hands-on workshops that draw on the culture of their holiday destinations.
• Cultural tourism: includes urban tourism, visiting historical or interesting cities, and experiencing their cultural heritages. This type of tourism may also include specialized cultural experiences, such as art museum tourism where the tourist visits many art museums during the tour, or opera tourism where the tourist sees many operas or concerts during the tour.
• Dark tourism: is the travel to sites associated with death and suffering. The first tourist agency to specialise in this kind of tourism started with trips to Lakehurst, New Jersey, the scene of the Hindenburg airship disaster.
• Disaster tourism: travelling to a disaster scene not primarily for helping, but because it is interesting to see. It can be a problem if it hinders rescue, relief and repair work.
• Drug tourism: travel to a country to obtain or consume drugs, either legally or illegally.
• Ecotourism: ecological tourism.
• Educational tourism: may involve travelling to an education institution, a wooded retreat or some other destination in order to take personal-interest classes, such as cooking classes with a famous chef or crafts classes.
• Extreme tourism: tourism associated with high risk.
• Free Independent Traveler: a sector of the market and philosophy of constructing a vacation by sourcing one's own components e.g. accommodation, transport.
• Gambling tourism, e.g. to Atlantic City, Las Vegas, Palm Springs, California, Macau or Monte Carlo for the purpose of gambling at the casinos there.
• Garden tourism visiting botanical gardens famous places in the history of gardening, such as Versailles and the Taj Mahal.
• Heritage tourism: visiting historical (Rome, Athens, Cracow) or industrial sites, such as old canals, railways, battlegrounds, etc.
• Health tourism: usually to escape from cities or relieve stress, perhaps for some 'fun in the sun', etc. Often to Sanatoriums or "health spas".
• Hobby tourism: tourism alone or with groups to participate in hobby interests, to meet others with similar interests, or to experience something pertinent to the hobby. Examples might be garden tours, amateur radio DX-peditions, or square dance cruises.
• Inclusive tourism: tourism marketed to those with functional limits or disabilities. Referred to as "Tourism for All" in some regions. Destinations often employ Universal Design and Universal Destination Development principles.
• for what is illegal in one's own country, such as abortion or euthanasia
• for advanced care that is not available in one's own country
• in the case that there are long waiting lists in one's own country
• Pop-culture tourism: tourism by those that visit a particular location after reading about it or seeing it in a film.
• Perpetual tourism: wealthy individuals always on vacation; some of them, for tax purposes, to avoid being resident in any country.
• Pilgrimage Tourism: pilgrimages to ancient holy places (Rome and Santiago de Compostela for Catholics, temples and stupas of Nepal for the Hindus and Buddhist, Mount Athos or Painted churches of northern Moldavia for the Orthodox), religious sites such as mosques, shrines, etc.
• Sex tourism: travelling solely for the purpose of sexual activity, usually with prostitutes
• Solo Travel: travelling alone
• Sport travel: skiing, golf and scuba diving are popular ways to spend a vacation. This could also include travelling to a major international sporting event such as the FIFA World Cup or following a tour such as the Ashes or British and Irish Lions.
• Space tourism: traveling in outer space or on spaceships.
• Vacilando is a special kind of wanderer for whom the process of travelling is more important than the destination.
• Wine tourism, the visiting of growing regions, vineyards, wineries, tasting rooms, wine festivals, and similar places or events for the purpose of consuming or purchasing wine.

Trends [ edit | edit source ]

The World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) forecasts that international tourism will continue growing at the average annual rate of 4 %.[3] By 2020 Europe will remain the most popular destination, but its share will drop from 60 % in 1995 to 46 %. Long-haul will grow slightly faster than intraregional travel and by 2020 its share will increase from 18 % in 1995 to 24 %.

With the advent of e-commerce, tourism products have become one of the most traded items on the internet. Tourism products and services have been made available through intermediaries, although tourism providers (hotels, airlines, etc.) can sell their services directly. This has put pressure on intermediaries from both on-line and traditional shops.

Space tourism is expected to "take off" in the first quarter of the 21st century, although compared with traditional destinations the number of tourists in orbit will remain low until technologies such as a space elevator make space travel cheap.

Technological improvement is likely to make possible air-ship hotels, based either on solar-powered airplanes or large dirigibles. Underwater hotels, such as Hydropolis, expected to open in Dubai in 2006, will be built. On the ocean tourists will be welcomed by ever larger cruise ships and perhaps floating cities.

Some futurists expect that movable hotel "pods" will be created that could be temporarily erected anywhere on the planet, where building a permanent resort would be unacceptable politically, economically or environmentally.

Sustainable tourism [ edit | edit source ]

There are many different definitions of sustainable tourism that have been developed over the last decade. Most tend to assume that all tourists are responsible for respecting and conserving a location's economic, environmental, and socio-cultural balances.

Global economists forecast continuing international tourism growth, ranging between three and six percent annually, depending on the location. As one of the world's largest and fastest growing industries, this continuous growth will place great stress on remaining biodiverse habitats, often used to support mass tourism. Sustainable tourists are aware of these dangers and seek to protect their favorite destinations, and to protect tourism as an industry. Sustainable tourists face many responsibilities to reduce tourism's impact on communities, including:

• informing themselves of the culture, politics, and economy of the communities being visited.
• anticipating and respecting local cultures' expectations and assumptions.
• contributing to intercultural understanding and tolerance.
• supporting the integrity of local cultures by favoring businesses which conserve cultural heritage
• supporting local economies by purchasing local goods and participating with small, local businesses.
• conserving resources by seeking out businesses that are environmentally conscious, and by using the least possible amount of non-renewable resources.

Green conventions, meetings and events [ edit | edit source ]

Large conventions, meetings and other major organized events drive the travel, tourism and hospitality industry. Cities and convention centers compete to attract such commerce, commerce which has heavy impacts on resource use and the environment. Major sporting events, such as the Olympic Games, present special problems regarding environmental burdens and degradation. But burdens imposed by the regular convention industry can be vastly more significant.

Green conventions and events are a new but growing sector and marketing point within the convention and hospitality industry. More environmentally aware organizations, corporations and government agencies are now seeking more sustainable event practices, greener hotels, restaurants and convention venues, and more energy efficient or climate neutral travel and ground transportation.

Additionally, some convention centers have begun to take direct action in reducing the impact of the conventions they host. One example is the Moscone Center in San Francisco, California, which has a very aggressive recycling program, a large solar power system, and other programs aimed at reducing impact and increasing efficiency.

With the advent of the internet, some traditional conventions are being replaced with virtual conventions, where the attendees remain in their home physical location and "attend" the convention by use of a web-based interface programmed for the task. This sort of "virtual" meeting eliminates all of the impacts associated with travel, accommodation, food wastage, and other necessary impacts of traditional, physical conventions.

Sustainable travel [ edit | edit source ]

Travel over long distances requires a large amount of either time or energy. Generally this involves burning fossil fuels, a largely unsustainable practice and one that contributes to climate change, via CO2 emissions.

Air travel is perhaps the worst offender in this regard, contributing to between 2 and 3% of global carbon emissions [1]. Given a business-as-usual approach, this could be expected to rise to 5% by 2015 and 10% by 2050. Car travel is the next worst offender.

Mass transport is the most climate friendly method of travel, and generally the rule is "the bigger the better" - compared to cars, buses are relatively more sustainable, and trains and ships are even more so. Human energy and renewable energy are the most efficient, and hence, sustainable. Travel by bicycle, solar powered car, or sailing boat produces no carbon emissions (although the embodied energy in these vehicles generally comes at the expense of carbon emission).

Ecotourism [ edit | edit source ]

Ecotourism, or ecological tourism, is a movement to make Tourism more ecological. When successful, it contributes actively to the conservation of natural and cultural heritage, includes local and indigenous communities in its planning, development and operation, reduces poverty and enhances intercultural & environmental understanding.

Travel planning [ edit | edit source ]

If you were to plan tourism you can use various online sources that allow for efficient and relatively low cost bookings of both flights and accommodations.

If you were going to start a business as a travel agent you could read books that cover this (although this one eventually should) or else you could study the topic at a local university or at Wikiversity (which should eventually cover the topic).

Tourism management [ edit | edit source ]

Hospitality and Tourism Management (HTM) is a major in a Bachelors of Science in Business Administration.

Graduate students graduate with a Masters of Business Administration, a Masters or Science, or a Doctorate of Philosophy in Hospitality and Tourism Management.

It is a focus that is studied by individuals that are intending to work in the Hospitality Industry, examples of which are; Hotels, Resorts, Casinos, and Restaurants.

Within the HTM concentration there is generally:

• Food Management and Operations (Examples: Food Science, Food Selection and Preparation, Food and Beverage Operations)
• Lodging Operations (Examples: Hotel Operations, Lodging Management, Financial Management and Cost Control for Hospitality Organizations)
• Global Tourism (Examples: Travel and Tourism Management, Tourism Analysis, Hospitality and Research Methods)
• Event Management (Examples: Hospitality Sales, Catering Management, Hospitality Marketing Management)

Several large corporations such as Marriot, Hyatt (go to www.Hyatt.com for current openings), Wyndham and Hilton Hotels have summer internships/manager in training programs for students majoring in Hospitality and Tourism Management, to help students get valuable work experience...

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• Importance of Advertising for a Restaurant
• Market Stall Ideas

When you go on summer vacation and spend days shopping in antique stores, hiking in a national park, eating local food and taking in a musical at the amphitheater, you are being a tourist. Tourism occurs when you leave your normal surroundings where you live and work to go to a place to engage in activities there, regardless of how close or how far it is. You are a visitor, and what you do while visiting is tourism. Individuals and organizations at your destination promote those activities through advertising or other forms of marketing.

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 Among Local Businesses

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 to potential visitors as an appealing weeklong destination by combining advertising and other marketing activities. Partnerships can provide tourists with a fuller travel experience.

Characteristics of Tourism Marketing

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.

Combining Tourism with other Opportunities

Combining tourism with volunteer opportunities is another tourism marketing strategy that appeals to many tourists. Popular both domestically and abroad, such volunteer tourism can range from repairing schools on American Indian reservations to installing water systems in poor communities.

Promoting sustainable tourism efforts also appeals to environmentally conscious travelers. Sustainable tourism emphasizes a balance on tourist activities and the effect it has on its surroundings, such as the environment. Practices include such things as energy-saving upgrades, environmentally friendly products and signs and even limiting the number of visitors to outdoor areas.

• American Marketing Association: Definition of Marketing
• University of South Carolina College of Hospitality, Retail, and Sport Management: Tourism Marketing in an Era of Paradigm Shift
• VolunTourism: VolunTourism FAQs
• Global Volunteers: FAQs
• University of South Carolina, Department of Hotel, Restaurant, and Tourism Management -- State Tourism Funding: Equity, Consensus, and Accountability Models
• Sustainable Tourism
• Tourism Insights: Segmenting the Tourism Marketing
• Rural Tourism Marketing
• Medical Tourism Association: Medical Tourism FAQs

Based in Central Texas, Karen S. Johnson is a marketing professional with more than 30 years' experience and specializes in business and equestrian topics. Her articles have appeared in several trade and business publications such as the Houston Chronicle. Johnson also co-authored a series of communications publications for the U.S. Agency for International Development. She holds a Bachelor of Science in speech from UT-Austin.

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