Chapter 18

Destination Marketing

“Marketing should focus on market creation, not market sharing”

- Regis McKenna

“To be wise, a man should read ten thousand books and travel ten thousand miles.” - Li Bai, Chinese poet, Tang Dynasty

©2006 Pearson Education, Inc. Marketing for Hospitality and Tourism, 4th editionUpper Saddle River, NJ 07458 Kotler, Bowen, and Makens

Chapter Objectives• Discuss the benefits of tourism • Explain tourism strategies and different

options for creating and investing in tourism attractions

• Understand how to segment and identify visitor segments

• Explain how central tourist agencies are organized

©2006 Pearson Education, Inc. Marketing for Hospitality and Tourism, 4th editionUpper Saddle River, NJ 07458 Kotler, Bowen, and Makens

Tourism

• Tourism is a stay of one or more nights away from home for holidays, visitors to friends or relatives, business conferences or any other purpose except such things as boarding education or semi-permanent employment

©2006 Pearson Education, Inc. Marketing for Hospitality and Tourism, 4th editionUpper Saddle River, NJ 07458 Kotler, Bowen, and Makens

The Globalization of the Tourist Industry

• Travel is a global business with an expanding market

• The top ten destinations in the world accounted for less than half the total tourism market in 2002

• Can you list three of the top ten destinations in the world?

©2006 Pearson Education, Inc. Marketing for Hospitality and Tourism, 4th editionUpper Saddle River, NJ 07458 Kotler, Bowen, and Makens

The Tourism Destination• Destinations are places with some form of

actual or perceived boundary – Physical boundaries– Political boundaries– Market-created boundaries

• Macrodestinations - the United States contains thousands of microdestinations, including regions, states, cities, towns, and even visitor destinations within a town

©2006 Pearson Education, Inc. Marketing for Hospitality and Tourism, 4th editionUpper Saddle River, NJ 07458 Kotler, Bowen, and Makens

Benefits of Tourism• Direct employment

• Support industries and professions

• Multiplier effect

• Source of state and local taxes

• Stimulates exports of place-made products

©2006 Pearson Education, Inc. Marketing for Hospitality and Tourism, 4th editionUpper Saddle River, NJ 07458 Kotler, Bowen, and Makens

Management of Tourist Destination

• Destinations that fail to maintain the necessary infrastructure or build inappropriate infrastructure run significant risks

• Violence, political instability, natural catastrophe, adverse environmental factors, and overcrowding can all diminish the attractiveness of a destination

• What was the effect of 9/11 on US Tourism?

©2006 Pearson Education, Inc. Marketing for Hospitality and Tourism, 4th editionUpper Saddle River, NJ 07458 Kotler, Bowen, and Makens

Sustainable Tourism

• Sustainable tourism is a concept of tourism management that anticipates and prevents problems that occur when carrying capacity is exceeded at the destination

• Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA)

©2006 Pearson Education, Inc. Marketing for Hospitality and Tourism, 4th editionUpper Saddle River, NJ 07458 Kotler, Bowen, and Makens

Steps in Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA)

• Inventory the social, political, physical, and economic environment

• Project trends

• Set goals and objectives

• Examine alternatives to reach goals

©2006 Pearson Education, Inc. Marketing for Hospitality and Tourism, 4th editionUpper Saddle River, NJ 07458 Kotler, Bowen, and Makens

Steps in Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA)

• Select preferred alternatives

• Develop implementation strategy

• Implement

• Evaluate©2006 Pearson Education, Inc. Marketing for Hospitality and Tourism, 4th editionUpper Saddle River, NJ 07458 Kotler, Bowen, and Makens

Sustainable Tourism

• Modified environments – Building eco-tourism subsets that encourage wildlife

• Successful long-run tourism destinations require cooperation between industry and community

©2006 Pearson Education, Inc. Marketing for Hospitality and Tourism, 4th editionUpper Saddle River, NJ 07458 Kotler, Bowen, and Makens

Tourist Events

• Attract a desired market

• Fit within the community’s culture

• Should be replicable (annual/biannual)

• Allow/encourage local resident participation

©2006 Pearson Education, Inc. Marketing for Hospitality and Tourism, 4th editionUpper Saddle River, NJ 07458 Kotler, Bowen, and Makens

Attractions• Natural

– Niagara Falls or The Scottish Highlands

• Man-made– The Shopping Areas of Buckingham

Palace, Hong Kong or the Vatican

©2006 Pearson Education, Inc. Marketing for Hospitality and Tourism, 4th editionUpper Saddle River, NJ 07458 Kotler, Bowen, and Makens

Stopover Tourism

• Many visitor destinations are in fact only stopover destinations for travelers on their way elsewhere

©2006 Pearson Education, Inc. Marketing for Hospitality and Tourism, 4th editionUpper Saddle River, NJ 07458 Kotler, Bowen, and Makens

Determinates of Demand

Prestige

Escape

Sexual Opportunity

Family Bonding

Relaxation

Social Interaction

Education

Self-discovery

Demand

©2006 Pearson Education, Inc. Marketing for Hospitality and Tourism, 4th editionUpper Saddle River, NJ 07458 Kotler, Bowen, and Makens

Identifying Target Markets

• Collect information about its current visitors

• Audit the destination’s events and attractions and select segments that might logically have an interest in them

©2006 Pearson Education, Inc. Marketing for Hospitality and Tourism, 4th editionUpper Saddle River, NJ 07458 Kotler, Bowen, and Makens

Self-Contained Attraction and Event Destinations

• Cruise ships, river paddle ships, special railroads such as the Orient Express– Dining, games, gambling, theatre,

musicals, participatory murder mysteries, seminars, dances, etc.

©2006 Pearson Education, Inc. Marketing for Hospitality and Tourism, 4th editionUpper Saddle River, NJ 07458 Kotler, Bowen, and Makens

Classification of Visitor Segments

• Group or Independent traveler

• Degree of institutionalization and impact on the destination

©2006 Pearson Education, Inc. Marketing for Hospitality and Tourism, 4th editionUpper Saddle River, NJ 07458 Kotler, Bowen, and Makens

Group vs. Independent

• Most commonly used– Group Inclusive Tour (GIT)– Independent Traveler (IT)

©2006 Pearson Education, Inc. Marketing for Hospitality and Tourism, 4th editionUpper Saddle River, NJ 07458 Kotler, Bowen, and Makens

Degree of Institutionalization and Impact on Destination

• Organized mass tourists• Individual mass tourists• Explorers• Drifters• Visiting friends/relatives• Business travelers• Pleasure travel

©2006 Pearson Education, Inc. Marketing for Hospitality and Tourism, 4th editionUpper Saddle River, NJ 07458 Kotler, Bowen, and Makens

Degree of Institutionalization and Impact on Destination

• Business and pleasure travelers

• Tag-along visitors

• Grief travel

• Education and religious travel

• Pass-through tourists

©2006 Pearson Education, Inc. Marketing for Hospitality and Tourism, 4th editionUpper Saddle River, NJ 07458 Kotler, Bowen, and Makens

Plog’s Categorization• Allocentrics are persons with a need

for new experiences, such as backpackers and explorers

• Psychocentrics are persons who do not desire change when they travel. They like non-threatening places and to stay in familiar surroundings

©2006 Pearson Education, Inc. Marketing for Hospitality and Tourism, 4th editionUpper Saddle River, NJ 07458 Kotler, Bowen, and Makens

Communicating with the Tourist Market

• Form an attractive image of destination

• Develop packages of attractions and amenities– Attractions alone do not attract visitors

©2006 Pearson Education, Inc. Marketing for Hospitality and Tourism, 4th editionUpper Saddle River, NJ 07458 Kotler, Bowen, and Makens

Organizing and Managing Tourism Marketing

• National tourist organizations (NTOs) are central tourist agencies that make a destination tourist friendly– may be public, quasi-public, nonprofit, or

private

– outside the United States, this agency is often run by the central government, state, or province, together with local government officials

©2006 Pearson Education, Inc. Marketing for Hospitality and Tourism, 4th editionUpper Saddle River, NJ 07458 Kotler, Bowen, and Makens

Influencing Site Selection

• All tourism businesses and agencies must work together to promote a destination and to ensure that visitors’ expectations are met– Fam trips, sales calls, travel missions, etc

©2006 Pearson Education, Inc. Marketing for Hospitality and Tourism, 4th editionUpper Saddle River, NJ 07458 Kotler, Bowen, and Makens

Best Practices

• Destination marketing strategy as an aid to recovery:

– U.S. destination marketing after 9/11

– Phuket, Thailand  after the Tsunami of 2004

©2006 Pearson Education, Inc. Marketing for Hospitality and Tourism, 4th editionUpper Saddle River, NJ 07458 Kotler, Bowen, and Makens

Key Terms

• Allocentrics

• Destinations

• Infrastructure

• Macrodestinations  

©2006 Pearson Education, Inc. Marketing for Hospitality and Tourism, 4th editionUpper Saddle River, NJ 07458 Kotler, Bowen, and Makens

Key Terms

• Multiplier effect

• National tourist organizations

• Psychocentrics

• Tourism

©2006 Pearson Education, Inc. Marketing for Hospitality and Tourism, 4th editionUpper Saddle River, NJ 07458 Kotler, Bowen, and Makens