Marketing for Tourism and Hospitality

Collaboration, Technology and Experiences

Alan Fyall, Patrick Legohérel, Isabelle Frochot, Youcheng Wang

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781317308799
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Industria dell'ospitalità e del turismo
• Index: Business

The marketing landscape has changed dramatically in recent years, especially for tourism and hospitality practitioners. Marketing for these industries is now a multi-dimensional, collaborative venture driven by technological change and the growing demand for authentic co-created experiences.

Marketing for Tourism and Hospitality provides students with a contemporary, accessible and useful resource as they prepare to encounter the complexities and challenges of tourism and hospitality marketing globally. A clear articulation of the changing landscape, a comprehensive introduction to the three underpinning themes of collaboration, technology and experiences, and a plentiful supply of international case material provide students with an enjoyable and digestible resource that is both academically rigorous and practice-oriented, helping them prepare for day-to-day problems in the dynamic world of marketing.

This contemporary, challenging and highly applied text is an indispensable resource for all students of tourism and hospitality degree programmes.

1 Revisiting traditional approaches to the marketing of tourism and hospitality

Key terms

marketing,

marketing management concepts,

strategic marketing planning,

experience economy

Learning outcomes

By the end of this chapter, students will:

• Understand the meaning of marketing and the origins of the marketing management concepts
• Become familiar with the strategic marketing planning process
• Understand the special characteristics of services generally and tourism and hospitality marketing more specifically
• Be cognizant of the evolution of economies and the emergence of the experience economy.

Introduction

What is marketing?

According to the American Marketing Association, “Marketing is the activity, set of institutions and processes for creating, communicating, delivering and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large” (Kotler & Keller, 2016, p. 26). This all-encompassing definition can be both intimidating and confusing to many. For now, think about marketing as a process in which a company seeks to understand the consumers’ needs and desires. Then, with this new understanding, the process culminates with the active education of the consumers about how one’s products and services help fulfill their needs and desires. Some view marketing as the promotion of only tangible products; this is incorrect. The truth is, just about everything can be marketed; events, people, ideas, and services are just a few of these entities.

Marketing methods, originating in the early 20^th century in western economies, are now omnipresent across the world with the vast majority of economies, even those with high levels of state control, adopting in some shape or form the basic tenets of marketing and market orientation. The world we live in is very complex with a number of quite considerable forces for change disrupting the current status quo to the extent that uncertainty is now the new normal in many countries. What doesn’t change though is the need to understand the needs, wants, and desires of individuals and groups of individuals who make up the markets that consume the products manufactured and supplied in order to ensure that those products and services delivered are those that the market wishes to consume. This process of “exchange” where supply ideally matches demand can relate to all exchange scenarios whether the exchange is driven by money, time, or societal need. As long as there exists some degree of freedom of choice as to which products or services the market can choose then the notion of exchange remains central to marketing irrespective of the product or service in question. According to Middleton et al. (2009, p. 24), for the user or buyer marketing is concerned with six key questions:

1. What are the needs, wants and desires of existing and prospective users and their interactions with suppliers?
2. Which products or services do they wish to buy or use and at what price?
3. What information do they obtain to make their purchasing or consuming decisions, how do they process that information and what type of communication influences their decision?
4. Where do they obtain their preferred products and services (i.e. where do they buy them from)?
5. What level of post-sales service is required (if any)?
6. What is their level of satisfaction with their purchase or consumption and how likely are they to make such a decision again?

For the producer or supplier organization, meanwhile:

1. Which products and services do they need to supply and why?
2. How many of the products or services do they need to produce?
3. At what price or cost do these products and services need to be made available for?
4. How should they communicate their products and services to users and buyers?
5. When, where, and how do they make them available to the market?
6. What level of service is required before, during, and/or after purchase has taken place?

What seem like very simple and ordinary questions on the surface, in reality require a management decision process and the adoption of a marketing orientation that ensures that the real needs of the market are met. This approach, which is often referred to as the “marketing concept” is, however, just one of four historical marketing concepts outlined in the next section.

The historical marketing management concepts

As mentioned above, there are four different trains of thought when it comes to marketing management. All of these concepts aim to fulfill business objectives and achieve financial success. However, each of these concepts have differing means to reach these ends. The four marketing management concepts are the: product concept; selling concept; marketing concept; societal concept.

The “product concept” can most easily be defined by the cliché, “Build it and they will come.” This theory assumes that if a quality product is built and sold at a reasonable price, little-to-no marketing effort will be needed to sell the product. This marketing management concept is what is known as a “product-oriented strategy.” Management’s concentration is on continuously improving their product, rather than on marketing strategies, in the hopes that the quality of the product itself will create demand. This concept’s popularity stems from an environment where demand outpaced supply; there was a shortage of manufactured goods and most markets had scarce levels of competition. Often being the only option to consumers, marketing as we know it today was generally deemed unnecessary. The product concept was wildly popular throughout history, ultimately giving way to the next orientation around the 1930s.

The “selling concept” states that consumer demand will not meet a company’s goals unless the product is aggressively promoted. Unlike the product concept, this concept assumes that when businesses and consumers are left alone, they will not naturally interact with one another. Those who operate under this business orientation believe that the degree of aggressiveness in advertising and selling tactics will have a positive correlation with sales volume. Thus, their primary objective is to increase profits through mass selling. This concept came about as competition in market places began to grow and supply began to exceed demand. Like the product orientation, this concept was inward looking. This myopic sales-oriented philosophy fails to address the needs, wants, or values of the consumer. The ever-increasing competition and focus on maximizing sales above all else, often leads to price wars, and declining product quality. Even if some companies survive a war of attrition, they ultimately suffer, as consumers begin to perceive the product as “cheap.” The selling concept spawned in the midst of the Great Depression and maintained its popularity well into the 1950s. On rare occasions, the concept can still hold relevance in today’s environment. In fact, Tourism and hospitality insights 1.1 demonstrates a very good example of where the selling concept continues to thrive.

Tourism and hospitality insights 1.1

selling timeshare

The sales process involves all aspects of an encounter between a salesperson and a prospective customer (AIF, 2014). Salesmanship is “the process of effecting the transfer, with a profit to buyer and seller, of goods and services that give such lasting satisfaction that the buyer is predisposed to come back to the seller for more of the same” (Vashisht, 2006, p. 14).

A salesperson must determine the prospects’ personal and family vacation goals, overcome any false perceptions the prospects might have, familiarize the prospects with the vacation ownership products and services available, and create a favorable impression of vacation ownership, the developer, and the resort. There is a saying within the vacation ownership industry: “People do not buy vacation products for how they work; they buy for how the product makes them feel” (AIF, 2014, p. 103). Often, prospects often approach the sales encounter with preconceptions based on publicity, comments from friends and acquaintances, and/or prior vacation ownership tours.

Therefore, the salesperson must remember several fundamentals of selling:

1) Know the company: A salesperson should remember that they are the face of the company and must always be able to answer questions regarding the company, policies and procedures, or other queries that prospects may have.

2) Know the product: A salesperson should be knowledgeable about the various aspects of the product as a prospect can have a variety of questions regarding the product throughout the presentation.

3) Know the competitors: It is important for a salesperson to be aware of the strengths and weaknesses of the product as compared to the competition. There is always the possibility that a prospect will be comparing products or have stayed at another vacation ownership property.

4) Know the customer: The discovery process is key to helping the salesperson gather as much information regarding the prospect as possible. This information will help the salesperson overcome objections and offer the right product to match the prospects’ needs and wants.

5) Know the selling process: the selling process should be tailored to match the customer’s buying process. The salesperson should be able to judge, using discovery questions and trial closes, if the customer is ready to purchase the product (AIF, 2014; Cobos & Templeton, n.d.; Vashisht, 2006).

In addition to the fundamentals of timeshare sales, research has shown that it is important to understand that most timeshare owners are frequent travelers and own vacation real estate at tourism destinations. This means that many of them may have somewhat of an interest in tourism development in the destinations where they own their timeshare (Huang et al., 2008). This makes timeshare owners a special group of tourists who have additional connections with the tourism destination through their timeshares. Having this knowledge, salespersons should be armed with knowledge regarding the local area and foster relationships with local governments and tourism organizations in order to stay informed about the local area (Huang et al., 2008).

References

AIF (2014). Timeshare industry: Resource manual.

Cobos, L.M., & Templeton, A. (Forthcoming). Sales practices: Getting over the sales slump. In A. Gregory (Ed.), Current cases in timeshare. Washington, DC: ARDA International Foundation.

Huang, C., Pennington-Gray, L., Ko, Y.J., & Thapa, B. (2008). Engaging timeshare owners in tourism destination management: Tourism planning and tourism marketing implications. Journal of Travel & Tourism Marketing, 27(1), 14–30.

Vashisht, K. (2006). A practical approach to sales management. New Delhi: Atlantic Publishers & Distributors.

Source: Amanda Templeton and Liza Cobos.

The “marketing concept,” meanwhile, is the concept we will spend the most time focusing on in this book. This concept shifted the strategic mindset for companies. Before, businesses operated on a “Sell what we can make” approach. With the marketing concept, businesses now operated with a “Make what we can sell” tactic. In market-driven economies, the primary focus of the marketing concept is to analyze and satisfy the wants and needs of the consumer. If achieving this, a company should also always be looking to create and increase overall customer value. It must be recognized that long-term success for a company relies on customer satisfaction and ...