Tourism and Hospitality Marketing

Tourism and Hospitality Marketing

• Marketing is crucial for business success, often taken for granted
• Kotler defines marketing as regulating product/service interest for consumers, setting sales and communication strategies. Marketing identifies needs and desires.
• The American Marketing Association defines marketing as planning and executing conception, pricing, promotion, and distribution to satisfy individual and organizational needs.
• Drucker viewed marketing as a core business discipline and customer focus as the primary corporate value.
• Marketing is the process of engaging customers, building relationships, and creating value to capture value in return.
• Marketing is about building awareness and potential customers, while sales converts potential customers into actual paying customers.
• Key differences between marketing and sales include approach (focused on brand vs. specific products) and activities (building awareness vs. making the sale)
• Effective marketing involves understanding customer needs and wants before selling.
• Customer value is the difference in perceived benefits/costs, while their satisfaction depends on exceeding expectations.
• Marketers need to consider quality, satisfaction, and value.
• The concept of a product encompasses physical goods and services, aiming to meet needs and wants.
• Effective marketing includes Needs, Wants, and Demands; products, exchanges, transactions and relationships, value, satisfaction, quality.
• The core concept of marketing lies in exchange. Market exchange is crucial for profitable customer relationships.
• Marketing mix is essential, comprised of Product, Price, Place, and Promotion (high quality, reasonable price, accessible locations, intensive promotion = marketing success.)

Core Marketing Concepts

• Needs are basic requirements (food, shelter, safety, belonging, esteem, self-expression).
• Wants are shaped by culture/personality (taro for a hungry person in PNG vs. a hamburger or a coke).
• Demands are wants plus purchasing power.
• A market is a group of potential customers with wants and the ability to buy a product.
• Market offering fulfills needs/wants of customers.
• Value is the difference between customer benefits and costs.
• Satisfaction is based on exceeding expectations. Quality involves meeting or surpassing expectations.

Five Core Marketing Concepts

• Needs, Wants, and Demand- Needs are basic requirements, while wants are shaped by culture and individual preferences. Demands are wants plus the ability to buy.
• Products/Market Offerings- Products are anything offered to a market for attention, acquisition, use, or consumption that might satisfy a need or want. This includes physical products and services. Market offerings go beyond the product itself and encompass the whole experience.
• Value, Satisfaction, and Quality Defined by value, satisfaction, and quality, value equates to customer benefits less cost. Satisfaction is a function of exceeding customer expectations, and quality is based on meeting or exceeding them.
• Exchange, Transactions, and Relationships- Exchange is the act of obtaining a desired object by offering something in return. Transactions are exchanges with specific measures (number of exchanges). Relationships are aimed at building long-term, profitable exchanges among stakeholders.
• Market- A market is a group of potential customers sharing a need or want that a company's product or service can satisfy. Marketers need to identify their target market.

Marketing Environment and SWOT Analysis

• Marketing environment involves external actors/forces impacting successful customer relationships.
• Businesses use environmental scanning and analysis to understand and adapt to changes.
• Both macro (large societal factors) and micro (internal factors within company control) environments affect a company.
• Microenvironment (Internal): Company, suppliers, intermediaries, competitors, customers, and publics.
• Macroenvironment (External): Demographic, economic, natural, technological, political and cultural forces.
• SWOT Analysis: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats.
• Internal factors (strengths, weaknesses) are controllable.
• External factors (opportunities, threats) are less controllable.
• Understanding both internal and external contexts allows effective strategy development.

Direct and Digital Marketing

• Direct marketing is a tool for engaging directly with individual consumers to cultivate lasting relationships and elicit immediate responses.
• Digital marketing encompasses online channels to target individuals and build customer relationships; key tools include websites, online advertising, email marketing, social media, and mobile marketing.
• Direct marketing uses communication channels to promote products/services.
• Digital marketing includes all communication methods over digital channels/networks.
• Businesses utilize these channels for direct interaction to personalize products/services, engage in real-time marketing, manage customer feedback and enhance brand relations.

Blogs and Other Online Forums

• Blogs and online forums have become vital tools to build brand communities and customer engagement.
• These platforms allow for discussions, information exchange, content creation, and community building.
• Effective marketing strategies utilize these platforms to reach customer communities, foster interaction, and gather valuable feedback.
• Social media marketing fosters brand interaction with a potentially large audience.
• Social media management and response are important to engage customer communities.