CU-BSC.TTM-SEM-III-Tourism Marketing- Second draft-converted

However, when you design that “off-the-beaten-path” experience, how do you market it to an audience? Utilizing YouTube and social networks, influencers can target specific niche fans, also increasing brand name awareness, publicising those distinguished experiences. 10.3 MARKETING STRATEGIES TO ATTRACT MORE VISITORS A number of different marketing strategies can be used for destination marketing purposes, helping to boost overall awareness of a destination and increase the number of people who actually visit. Below, you will find more information about 14 of these strategies and how destination marketing organisations can use them to get results. 1. Define the Unique Selling Points Arguably the single most important step for any organisation engaging in destination marketing is to take the time to clearly define what makes your destination unique. There are a huge range of ways a destination can stand out, such as unique activities to offer visitors, or unique natural features, like mountains, beaches or volcanoes. It could be that your location has a fascinating history, or unique landmarks, like the Eiffel Tower, the Empire State Building, or the Great Wall of China. Perhaps the culture of the location is its unique selling point and visitors would want to travel to experience local events, museums or sports clubs. Try to identify as many USPs as possible. 2. Define Target Audience & Market Another of the best destination marketing strategies involves identifying your target audiences. Think about who is likely to want to visit the destination and for what reason. Often, you will need to break this down into several different audiences, who each may have different reasons for wanting to travel to your location. 201 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

For instance, it could be that your destination appeals to youngsters on a gap year, and elderly couples enjoying their retirement. It might be that it appeals to people who enjoy outdoor sporting activities and people who want to relax on the beach. You also need to consider the different groups, such as tourists, business travellers and students. Finally, think about whether certain markets are more likely to be interested than others. This could mean people in nearby countries, if you have excellent transport links, or people who speak the same language. 3. Utilise Data for Analytics Destination marketing organisations can potentially obtain and utilise vast amounts of data, for a number of different purposes. As an example, the organization’s website can allow you to use tools like Google Analytics to find out about your visitors, who they are, where they came from and what their motivation was. Offline, you can find out information about existing visitors, such as the average age, whether your destination appeals more to men or women, and what methods of transport they use. Once you have gathered sufficient data, you can analyse it to identify the best people to reach out to, the best ways to reach them and the best messages to push. 4. Brand Your Destination Branding is a technique used by businesses, in order to make them easily identifiable. The concept of branding can include logos, colour schemes and other design principles, as well as slogans or repeated use of certain terminology. Ultimately, branding is about being recognisable and standing out from others. This principle can be fairly easily applied to a destination. Try to come up with a coherent colour scheme, use a tagline that says something about the destination itself, create hashtags for people to use on social media, and try to be as consistent as possible with your promotional messaging, so that people become familiar with it. 5. Involve All Stakeholders A significant component of destination management involves looking out for the interests of various stakeholders, in order to establish trust and facilitate engagement. The stakeholders 202 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

might include officials from your country, city, village or state, as well as hotels, attractions, restaurants, shopping venues, travel agents and tour operators. Try to come up with destination marketing strategies that encourage these various parties to participate and support your destination. See if you can get stakeholders to agree to use some of your wider destination branding, and to run their own advertising or marketing campaigns, in order to maximise visitor interest. 6. Create An Amazing Destination Website Regardless of their reasons for travelling, the majority of travellers now use the internet to research their destination before booking. A destination website is the ideal place to showcase unique selling points, communicate directly with your target audience(s) and promote your destination through images, videos and virtual reality tours. You can use the website to provide travellers with all of the information they need ahead of their trip, and to promote accommodation options, attractions, events, places to eat and drink, and more. It is important that your website is optimised for mobile users, while an on-site blog can help to encourage people to keep coming back. 7. Search Engine Optimisation When people use search engines like Google to look for things related to your destination, or features that your destination can offer them, you want to make sure your website is near the top of those search engine results pages. The best way to do this is to create a comprehensive search engine optimisation strategy. This involves researching keywords, creating content that targets those keywords, and using a range of other techniques to improve your placement. You can also use SEO principles to promote videos and images too. An on-site blog can be beneficial here too, as it will give you plenty of fresh content to optimise with strategic keyword usage. 8. Experience Marketing Most travellers are motivated by experiences, so it makes sense to market a destination this way. Instead of showing attractions, use promotional material to show how people experience 203 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

them. One way to do this is to stimulate the sharing of user generated content, so that people share their own moments on your website and on social media. When you achieve this, you turn your own visitors into ambassadors for your destination. Word of mouth promotion can be extremely successful, because it is considered more trustworthy than hearing from an organisation with a clear motive. On top of this, VR 360 tours can be a great way to allow online users to enjoy their own experiences. 9. Video and Virtual Reality Marketing Both video marketing and virtual reality marketing can go a long way towards boosting your destination marketing efforts. Video content can be easily shared across platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. These videos can promote local places of interest, or can feature local people speaking about your destination. Virtual reality marketing goes a step further and provides ways for your target audience to actually experience aspects of your destination from the comfort of their own home. This could be a virtual tour of a local hotel, a virtual travel experience of a nearby entertainment venue, or 360-degree tours of attractions or landmarks. 10. Online Advertising Strategies Your online ads will be informed by the knowledge and data you've learned about your visitors and target audience. You can use this data to tailor search ads to specific geographic areas, pay for display advertising on the right channels, and support content on third-party websites that your target audience visits. Furthermore, re-marketing helps you to contact people who have already visited your destination website or followed your DMO on social media. This allows you to remind people about your destination while also recognising that they have already shown interest, which can help them commit to a visit. 11. Offline Promotional Strategies i) You should be able to predict where your target group is going to move because you know who they are, what they are looking for, and where they are coming 204 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

from. Some destinations, for example, attract visitors during the summer months, while others attract visitors for winter sports. Some could be more appealing during the holidays, such as Christmas. ii) This makes developing a detailed offline advertising plan much simpler. iii) Television advertisement, radio advertising, and promotion in newspapers and magazines are some of the offline strategies you can use. You could pay for advertising, write stories about your destination, and target specific local publications in areas where your target audience lives in the latter two examples. iv) Since an organization's most valuable relationship is with its target consumers, customer loyalty should be the foundation for every marketing campaign. I In tourism, target audiences may be domestic or international, budget or luxury, young or old, adventurous or conventional, and so on. The goods on offer and the marketing campaign devised should be targeted to the audience for whom the efforts are being made. The following are some of the questions that must be addressed before settling on a tourism marketing strategy: v) What is the primary goal of the organisation that provides the service? Is it profit- driven or solely service-driven? (A government tourism development organisation, for example, may have a solely service-oriented motto.) vi) Who are the intended customers? or Which demographics is the organisation attempting to satisfy? vii) What are the firm's strengths and weaknesses? or how can they be used to the benefit of the company? viii) What are the available resources? and how can they be put to the best possible use? ix) What is the essence of the rivalry in the environment and how extensive is it? What are the segments that the rivals are overlooking? Is it possible to stick to a niche marketing strategy? x) What kinds of promotional activities are needed? Once satisfactory answers to all of the above questions have been given, a suitable strategy that meets all of the conditions can be established. Innovative Development Of Tourism Obviously, the overall plan for a tourism company's creative growth is not similar, and it should be developed in a dynamic manner. All or even some of the tasks of formulating the 205 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

related components of the plan will be inconsistent at the same time. As a result, it is important to resolve them to the greatest extent possible. It is desirable to use the creative marketing technique, first and foremost, used by them, in the growth of companies and firms specialising in tourism. In terms of the company's creative marketing strategy's framework. The only way to build the innovation complex is to work closely with the financial and investment complex. Since different strategies for innovation funding are required, general concepts of complex strategic growth are required. The innovation complex's main goal is to establish conditions that enable current and future generations of consumers to pursue meaningful and unrestricted growth. It's also a good idea to call attention to the tourism company's unique goals. 10.4 SUMMARY A major feature of development is thought to be the coordination of tourist activity development, ensuring the creation of new tourist routes in regions, their certification, and the formation of consolidated national registers along tourist routes and tourist items. In this way, the government ensures the formation and implementation of a comprehensive tourism growth strategy aimed at dramatically increasing the country's tourist potential. 10.5 KEY WORDS • GDS - Global distribution system • Follower approach- If the company does not achieve short-term success and does not become the market leader. • Challenger approach- when a company is unable to pursue a market leader's. • Accreditation: A procedure to establish if a tourism business meets certain standards of management and operation. • Adventure tourism: A form of tourism in natural areas that incorporates an element of risk, higher levels of physical exertion, and the need for specialised skills. • Auditing: A process to measure and verify the practices of a business. 10.6 LEARNING ACTIVITY 1 Mention the new challenges faced by tourism industry. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 206 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

10.7 UNIT END QUESTIONS A. Descriptive Questions Short Questions 1. Explain GDS 2. What is the impact on corona virus on tourism? 3. Explain the innovative development of tourism 4. What is social media strategy? 5. What is challenger’s approach? Long Questions 1. Explain Marketing strategies to attract more visitors? 2. What are the challenges of marketing strategy? 3. Explain Nichie marketing stratrgy. 4. Describe follower strategy. 5. List the offline promotion’s strategy. A. Multiple Choice Questions. 1. Internal tourism includes a. Domestic & Inbound tourism b. Inbound tourism c. Domestic tourism d. Outbound tourism 2. National tourism includes a. Domestic tourism b. Outbound tourism c. Domestic & Outbound tourism d. None of these. 3. Visitors spending at least three hours away from home outside their usual environment for leisure but not staying away overnight is known as a. Leisure day visitor 207 b. Twisty CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

c. Same day visitor d. None of these. 4. The process of grouping people within a market according to similar needs, characteristics, or behavior is known as a. Tourism marketing b. Segmentation c. Targeting d. None of these 5. When a visitor travels in his country of residence, he is a ------------------- visitor a. Domestic b. International c. Inbound d. Out bound 6. The Indian Government took its first tourist marketing initiative through the incredible India campaign in a. 2001 b. 2000 c. 1999 d. 2002. 7. A person who travels on foot is known as a. Pouching b. Way Tarer c. Cosmopolitan d. None of these 8. Illegal hunting of animals or land is under official protection, is known as 208 a. Pouching b. Cosmopolitans c. Way Tarer d. None of these. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

9. The combination of geographic and demographic segmentation is known as a. Geodemographic b. Psychographic c. Segmentation d. None of these 10. The main aim of the tourism industry in India is a. To spread word of mouth & create repeat visitors b. To spread word of month c. Create repeat visitors d. None of these. 11. Written or electronic mail sent to prospective customer is known as a. Direct mail b. Indirect mail c. Personal Mail d. None of these Answer 1.a 2.c 3.c 4.b 5.a 6.d 7.b 8.a 9.a 10.a 11.a 10.8 REFERENCES Reference books • Kotler, Philip : Marketing Management & Hospitality and Tourism Marketing. • Sinha, P.C : Tourism marketing. • Vearne, Morrisson Alison: Hospitality marketing • Kotler, Philip and Armstrong Philip, Principle of Marketing, 1999, Prentice-Hall India, 1999 Text books • Specific Country Guide Books of Lonely Planet Publication. • DK Eyewitness Travel Guide: Europe • A.K Bhatia – International TourismMgt. • International Geography for Travel and Tourism by John P.Wrades 209 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

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