Marketing communications in tourism and recreation play an important role, as potential consumers should decide on purchases based on their existing views on the proposed tourism products to them, and not guided by physical, tangible examples. As a result of marketing communications today are a key element of the marketing mix in the tourism and leisure, and cover a wide range of activities. This reflects the role of the special importance of promotion aimed at developing the potential consumer attitudes towards the desired product and service representative for desired behavior.
Modern consumers are skeptical of many initiatives marketing professionals, so to attract and retain consumer interest in any kind of goods is difficult. At the present time, to ensure a successful sale of goods or services, companies need to do more than just watch its excellent quality, setting him on the lowest price, or simply place the best product on the shelves. The company must sell their products, accompanying them with original, informative and attractive appeals that would convince these products in accordance to the needs and desires of consumers.
Special characteristics of services and goods from the differences services require additional knowledge and marketing, although many approaches to marketing of goods apply to services, but their use is often different.
Service industry, as a rule, is a high contact area, where the quality of service is inseparable from the quality of your service provider. High contact means that the sale of services occur in the process of meeting the customer and the service provider. The service provider brings to the service result some material, which is manifested in the creation of customer experience based on the fact that the buyer sees artist services that behave confident professional gives advice during maintenance and listen to comments and requirements of the buyer uses modern equipment and tools. All of these items are visible to the buyer when purchasing invisible services and therefore give the impression of confidence that the service will be performed, and the buyer is satisfied. Thus, the provider of a service to become like a part of the result of the service, part of the service itself.
The breadth and diversity of the service industry makes it difficult to determine the opportunities in various sectors of services of general regularities characteristic of the service sector. In this paper we will consider the specifics of marketing communications in tourism.
Tourism is an industry that sells intangible experiences. Communication is vital to the success of tourism businesses since it is only through the effective use of communication that tourism marketers can offer to customers tangible cues about those intangible experiences. Also, while communication is an essential component in the conduct of any service business, it has got an overarching role in tourism. Tourists are individuals who want to escape from the routines of the mundane world. They want to experience ‘the other’ aspect of their selves not allowed to be expressed in the ordinary life settings. Such a conceptualization of the tourism phenomenon gives us clues about the type of communication that will be appreciated by tourists.
Modern marketing of tourist firm means more than the development of good services, setting them attractive prices and bringing them customers target market.
Travel firm must also have a continuous communication link with existing and potential customers. Therefore, every travel company inevitably begins to play as a source of communication and generator of various means of promoting information about the services market.
It is very important to understand the communication process.
Seven major elements of communication process are: (1) sender (2) ideas (3) encoding (4) communication channel (5) receiver (6) decoding and (7) feedback.
Communication may be defined as a process concerning exchange of facts or ideas between persons holding different positions in an organization to achieve mutual harmony. The communication process is dynamic in nature rather than a static phenomenon.
Communication process as such must be considered a continuous and dynamic inter-action, both affecting and being affected by many variables.
- Sender: the person who intends to convey the message with the intention of passing information and ideas to others is known as sender or
- Ideas: this is the subject matter of the This may be an opinion, attitude, feelings, views, orders, or suggestions.
- Encoding: since the subject matter of communication is theoretical and intangible, its further passing requires use of certain symbols such as words, actions or pictures etc. Conversion of subject matter into these symbols is the process of
- Communication Channel: the person who is interested in communicating has to choose the channel for sending the required information, ideas etc. This information is transmitted to the receiver through certain channels which may be either formal or
- Receiver: receiver is the person who receives the message or for whom the message is meant It is the receiver who tries to understand the message in the best possible manner in achieving the desired objectives.
- Decoding: the person who receives the message or symbol from the communicator tries to convert the same in such a way so that he may extract its meaning to his complete
- Feedback: feedback is the process of ensuring that the receiver has received the message and understood in the same sense as sender meant
One obstacle that prevents marketing messages from being efficient and effective is called barrier. Barrier is anything that distorts or disrupts a message. It can occur at any stage in the communication process. The most common form of noise affecting marketing communication is clutter.
Communication processes should not be left to chance. To work effectively firms often hire advertising agencies to develop effective advertising professionals to promote marketing, preparation of programs promoting tourism product and, finally, firms engaged in public relations for the development of the corporate image of the company. For any tourist firm not only a question what kind of communication policy conduct, but how much money you need to spend and how to do it.
Modern marketing requires much more than create a product that meets customer needs, assign it the right price and make it available to target consumers. Firms need to communicate with their customers. In this case, the content of communications should not be anything random, otherwise, the firm reduced profits because of the large costs of implementing the communication and because of the damage to the image of the company.
Considerable resources (time, personal effort and money) are invested in developing products and services. If the organization has also invested in marketing research, it is not unreasonable to expect success and returns in selling these products and services to customers. However, the task of ensuring a profitable exchange requires communicating with customers.
Promotional activities have long played a significant role in communicating with existing and potential customers. As customers have become more sophisticated and better understood in terms of their aspirations and needs, so have communications become more sophisticated.
Effective marketing communications can:
- create a need;
- create, build and maintain awareness, image and reputation;
- educate;
- inform;
- provoke a response;
- reinforce competitive advantage influence;
- build a relationship increase
It is not enough just to be creative at marketing communications. We communicate in many different ways with customers and other stakeholders, and they all need to be consistent or they create confusion and even damage the efforts of our marketing communications.
Marketing Communications consists of four main means of influence:
- advertising;
- propaganda;
- sales promotion;
- personal
Advertising — this applies to any non-personal form, by any means information about the physical or legal person, goods, ideas and initiatives (advertising information), which is designed for an indefinite or a certain group of people, openly come and paid advertiser and is designed to form and maintain interest to this physical, legal entity, ideas and initiatives and to promote the sale of goods, ideas and initiatives.
The tactical aims in advertising tourism products will be no different from those of any other product, in line with the objectives given above of informing, persuading and reminding. Essentially, the aims will follow the AIDA:
- attracting Attention;
- creating interest;
- fostering desire;
- inspiring
Tourism principals' approaches can vary markedly in their advertising aims. Wellestablished destinations, transport companies and tour operators will often focus on brand awareness and the qualities with which the brand is associated (thus Thomas I Cook's series of television advertisements in 2003 emphasising their quality control mechanisms). Others will use the less expensive medium of press advertising to 1 achieve all four of the AIDA aims, with the action element translated into sending for a brochure. The drive to make the most of tight budgets has increased pressure for, advertising to feature some kind of 'call to action' which can be measured — thus, the addition of a reply-paid card glued to the advertisement appears in many weekend f national newspapers in the peak booking period following the turn of each new year. In addition, tour operators will underpin I their strategic advertising with a year-round programme encompassing relatively shortterm tactical aims [1; 266].
In addition to the list of general advertising channels listed earlier, there are distinct ways in which tourism and hospitality organizations advertise their products and services.
In the case of resort-based hospitality or visitor attractions, for example, it is common to use leaflets or flyers to promote competing venues for bars and nightclubs and restaurants. These are distributed on busy shopping and/or culture streets or quarters of the city or resort. These forms of advertising are particularly important for spontaneous decision-making and to raise awareness of promotions or current events.
When planning a tourism advertising campaign, the organization must consider the types or mix of media which will be used to deliver the message. The range of media types which can be useful for tourism is as follows:
- campaign;
- business-to business (B2B) sales missions/workshop/exhibitions;
- print advertising;
- direct mail/customer relationship management (CRM)/newsletters);
- online advertising/e-CRM (including e-newsletters);
- brochure distribution;
- agent training programmes;
- familiarization visits;
- lead generation research [2].
Campaign. Refers to a specific communications drive directed towards potential customers through a communications campaign which includes the full range of above-and below-the-line advertising and media.
B2B Sales Missions. B2B sales missions, workshops and exhibitions refer to communications made to other businesses such as travel agents and tour operators. This is particularly useful for the travel trade where destinations promote themselves to tour operators, tour operators promote their activities alongside destinations and transport and visitor attractions also promote themselves to a travel trade audience. However, customer-oriented travel or holiday exhibitions or 'fairs' have emerged as a new form of promotional activity directly targeting customers.
Print Advertising. Print advertising generally refers to the printed media, advertisements in newspapers, magazines, advertorials and other printed forms.
Online Advertising. Online advertising, including e-CRM and e-newsletters, refers to advertising placed on websites or to e-mail database advertising. Online advertising is the subject of Chapter 10 and so will not be covered here.
Direct Mail/CRM/Newsletters. Increasingly, tourism and hospitality organizations alongside many other sectors are turning to database marketing, or 'direct marketing' and communication approaches as mentioned previously The advantages of these types of communication are that they can be personalized and thus make appeals on the basis of familiarity which in turn may lead to customer loyalty. Hotels are particularly good at exploiting their databases and their client preferences to direct personalized advertisements.
Brochure Distribution. In tourism and travel, there remains a heavy reliance on brochures and so the development and distribution of brochures forms an important part of the communications mix. Brochures have always been a vital communication tool in tourism as a source of information and in aiding consumer decision-making. Brochures traditionally helped overcome some of the problems of intangibility and also allowed the organization to deliver some strong messages about the destination or organization in an advertising format. Mostly, brochures are requested by potential consumers so there is a good chance to sell. However, they are often very generic, undifferentiated, and so they may not have enough appeal for niche market audiences. Brochures create representations of the resorts, destinations and brands featured by the organization. They use a standard mix of images and narrative and the authenticity of these representations has been the subject of much debate in tourism social science.
Agent Training Programmes. Agent training programmes are largely designed to enable destinations, tour operators and visitor attractions to brief sales personnel so that they are more aware of the products and their benefits and features. In this way agent training programmes can be equated with familiarization visits. However, these can also be targeted at journalists to generate press coverage in the travel and lifestyle sections of the printed or broadcast media.
Lead Generation Research. Lead generation research is concerned with the identification of the names and addresses of potential customers to target with personal selling through telephone or house visits [3; 218].
Tactical advertisements will push late availability, often coupled with special price offers which, whether placed by operator or travel agent, will make a strong case to book the holiday then and there. Telephone hotlines, Internet websites, credit card facilities and 7-day 24-hour service are major features of such advertisements.
Sales promotion is the marketing activities other than advertising, promotion and personal selling, stimulating consumer purchasing and dealer effectiveness of exhibitions, demonstrations, and various nonrecurring sales efforts.
Personal selling. By definition Kotler under the personal selling understood oral presentation of goods in the course of the conversation with one or more potential buyers for the purpose of sale.
Advocacy is an integral part of the broader concept, the concept of activity in the organization of public opinion (public relations). Public Relations is a long-planned effort to establish and maintain friendly relations and mutual understanding between an organization and its public.
In our article we also focus on marketing communications through the Internet.
The freedom of choice provided by the Internet is just the latest factor in the underlying changes in the tourism market outlined in Chapter 4. Many of today's travelers are likely to be the third generation of their families to enjoy foreign holidays. Better educated and more experienced than their parents, they are no longer deterred by the three Fs of flying, foreign food and foreign languages. Instead, they are sophisticated consumers used to expressing themselves through their lifestyle and by what they buy and consume. This trend is evident, for example, in food, fashion and home improvements as well as in holiday destinations and choice of travel products. Many modern customers are in demanding jobs, are 'money rich but time poor', and are looking for new experiences to get the most out of their precious limited free time. The Internet simply provides them with a more convenient means of satisfying these aspirations.
The choice available to consumers has increased owing to a number of other supply-side factors alongside the Internet. Deregulation of air travel and the rise of the low-cost carriers have encouraged the growth of the impulse-buy short-break market, offering new destinations near regional airports. Political changes, such as the opening up of Eastern Europe, the abolition of visa requirements and the adoption of a common European currency, all reduce the need to plan ahead. The fact that there is often little to choose between competing hotel or airline brands, and that an acceptable quality of service can often be taken for granted, means that short breaks booked over the Internet are seen as relatively low-risk purchases [4; 250].
These studies, conducted by the marketing team Neil sen Netratings in already 2005 in 38 countries, show that about 10 % of the population — 627 million people — make purchases through the Internet.
The most popular goods purchased online, was the book: 212 million people said that it was among the book last three goods purchased over the Internet. In second place on the list of the number of people visiting the tourist sites and book travel services — 135 million customers [5].
The rapid development of the tourist industry in recent decades due to two factors c: development of civil aviation and the establishment of computer reservation systems. In turn, the increase in the number of airlines, aircraft, a well as the growth of air traffic naturally led to the need for and use of computer reservation systems CRS (Somputer Reservation System), which became the main instrument for airline reservation. The first backup system came on the market in the mid 60s. XX century. This system was Arollo company United Airlines and Sabre company American Airlines. Initially, the development of computer reservation systems went through the installation of terminals in the offices of the airlines themselves. They greatly improved the quality and efficiency of the airline personnel, improve customer service for Account reduce the time of ticket issuance, reduce staff providing ticket booking. Technical equipment of the first reservation centers engaged IBM company, which still supplies equipment for redundancy.
Somewhat later began installing terminals reservations in major tourist agencies. C advent of such systems travel agents were able to reserve tickets in real time in seconds. The introduction of reservation systems will significantly reduce the time of customer service and provide redundancy in the mode of online, reducing cebestoimost offered services, in particular by reducing the number of employees engaged in book, to increase the number and diversity of services. Along with this, the opportunity to implement flexible pricing strategy, optimize the loading of aircraft, flight connections different airlines to optimize the formation of the route of transportation of tourists to the price, time of flight and other tasks.
Evaluate the effectiveness of the new reservation and prospects of their use, airlines have substantially broadened the spectrum presented in reservation systems of information, the same functionality csistem ethics. Originally targeted to an individual airline, these systems have become software systems serving groups of airlines and provide a range of additional services for hotel bookings, order train tickets, car rental, etc. Now booking systems put in information not only o availability, but also general information o flights, types of aircraft involved, a detailed description of tariffs, as well as information related industries o tourism business: car rental, hotel accommodation, sale of railway tickets and others.
Development and wide distribution of computer reservation systems CRS carried out, on the one hand, by increasing the number of services provided, ac other hand, by reducing the cost of electronic booking and reservation services. Expanding the scope of activity going on in all directions provided by the tourist industry services, including accommodation, entertainment and so on. D.This led to the creation of global distribution systems — GDS. B addition to the capabilities of the electronic service bookings for transportation of passengers, these systems allow you to reserve places in hotels, rent cars, exchange currency, produce order tickets for entertainment and sports programs, and so on. D. B practice western tourist firms, these systems naturally built into the process chain formation and processing of tourist information, a mechanism through the credit card provided financial responsibility when booking tours. Through the global distribution systems can be contacted with hundreds of airlines and thousands of hotels and car rental companies, and book tickets for rail, marine and ferry services, to carry out the reservation of tickets to attend various cultural events.
To new methods of e-marketing as well include the following tools.
Agency of mixed
For reasons that consumers do not purchase online are:
- preferred travel agent services;
- information on the Internet, is incomplete;
- distrust of virtual agencies;
- someone else involved in the organization of their travel on vacation;
- lack of knowledge of good tourist sites;
- the inability to use the Site;
- new to using the
For this reason, online travel agencies understand the need to add to their services «human factor». The creation of the agency «mixed type» (online companies that are supported by a network of traditional travel agencies) is a solution to this problem. While many traditional travel agencies in a hurry to get a place on the Internet, some agencies are trying to create a virtual-network sales offices and their supporting infrastructure.
Companies Hotel Reservations Network, Cheap Tickets and Lowestfare.com offer customers the opportunity to book a flight or hotel room reservation center.
Model «name your price».
Ecommerce is now using new business models that go beyond the traditional relationship «customerseller». The latest technology allows customers to play a more active role in seeking information and making decisions. Examples of new business models are the auctions of the «name your price» and group purchases [6].
The online model «name your price» as a new method of buying products and services appeared on the Internet in 1998. It is a type of reverse auction in which the potential buyer informs the supplier about what he is looking for a product, for example, the desired direction, dates and price he is willing to pay. In response to the agent, or in this case a web-site, transmits information to the supplier, who may accept or reject the request. The system was an instant success, and in the first month on the site visited by 1.5 million visitors. Following Priceline.com other distribution companies have developed similar business model, which allows to discuss the terms of the contract with the supplier and to offer consumers a wide range of products and services at a discount. The mechanism of the transaction between the supplier and the consumer can take many forms, but in the case of Priceline.com product is considered to be sold only when the buyer announces the completion of the transaction. Lowestfare.com, Cheap Tickets and Travels cape.com are among the companies that have used the model Priceline.com to sell their travel products online.
Nowadays online Armored becoming increasingly important. There was a lot of different programs reservations that have their advantages and disadvantages. Online booking enjoyed becoming more common in airlines and hotels and in other areas related to tourism. It plays an important role in the sale of travel packages.
Speed and reliability are the main advantages of online booking systems. But its main drawback is that if there are problems in the Internet, book becomes possible.
Often links to motivations are made implicit within the messages of tourism and hospitality organisations; after all, most people can empathise with a stated 'need for a holiday'. The DMO or hotel provider needs to remind people of the ability of the destination or hotel to meet the needs for relaxation, 'unwinding', shopping, adventure, culture or pampering — whatever the values being communicated. Services providers understand that the choices facing individuals for these types of purchase decisions are often not low involvement, fast-moving consumer goods, where habit, routine and convenience, familiarity and security dominate cognitive processes. Depending on the type of service, holiday decisions are often high involvement 'shopping' decisions, where family (or peers or significant others) collaboration is often required, significant information search and evaluation of alternatives is conceived as the norm.
However, in recent years, the most successful tourism and hospitality sectors have employed product and promotional strategies which appear to have drawn on similar approaches to marketing communications as those used for fast-moving consumer goods. The 'low-cost' airlines and budget hotels sectors have been successful in employing 'unbelievable' pricing strategies, based on an aggressive cost-control operations and product development model for air travel and overnights, which have firmly established brand values, positive associations and have driven consumer demand over the last 5 years.
Although new wisdom in integrated marketing communications has challenged the ability of advertising to change buying behaviour, it is clear that in the context of Europe and the advanced economies of the world considerable shifts in behaviour have been witnessed, driven by conventional marketing mix strategies that include aggressive mass media advertising, heavy discounting, focus on good value products and online distribution. When easyjet, Ryanair and Travelodge advertise and promote heavy price discounts for seats and bed-nights, there is a ready market which waits to snap up bargain short breaks and trips, which is something that might not easily equate in terms of consumer reaction to similar communications for toothpaste or car shampoo products, for example. Conventional habits around seasonality and timing, planning and response, anticipation and experience, cognitive and behaviour processing have all been affected recently by new travel and hospitality products.
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