Leisure and Tourism Marketing, Essay Example

Abstract

In this paper, readers would get to learn about the different marketing strategies for different brands in different locations. It is hoped that readers would be able to apply the knowledge gained from this paper in practical marketing situations. It is advised that professors guide readers in internalizing the different concepts of marketing as detailed in this paper.

Introduction

Marketing has always been an important part in the growth of products and services being offered in organizations. The products and services would never be known to the public unless the organizations implement marketing strategies for them. Marketing strategists need to be competent professionals who can carry out in successfully convincing the customers to patronize the products and services that they are endorsing. It would be most helpful to hire strategists who have had educational trainings and work experiences in successful marketing. These strategists should have proven track records in successful marketing. Several strategists are encouraged to work on the endorsement of a particular product or service. This is because it has always been better for two or several heads to work together.

Body

Marketing Of Travel Agencies

Travel agencies have long been part of the travelling habits of people all over the world. Most of the time, they have provided people with cheap services such as cheap air tickets and hotel room reservation purchases. People avail of the services of travel agents instead of going directly to airline company offices to purchase tickets in order to purchase cheaper air tickets. Hotel reservation purchases are also much cheaper in travel agents than if the purchases were directed to be made in hotels. Aside from these services, travel agents also offer cheap tour packages and pick-up services to their clients.

Despite these common services offered by travel agents, there still exist some competitions in the market between travel agencies existing around the world. The question whether or not customers prefer to visit on-site travel agents or if they likely prefer making transactions with online travel agents such as Expedia comes into play. The customers are likely to consider which travel agents may offer the possible lowest prices to them, while at the same time, keeping up with the high quality standards of their services.

Traveling agents need to be able to recruit the strategic marketing specialists who would know the target populations of the services of the companies. Furthermore, these specialists would need to be likewise familiar with the approximate income of their target populations so as to consider them as well when divulging their marketing scheme. Marketing of travel agents may be in the form of making calls to prospective clients to offer them various services that the travel agents have to offer.

Marketing Of Budget Hotels

Budget hotels are everywhere around the world to cater to the needs of people who budget their money and does not want to spend too much. Most of the budget hotels do not have special amenities that two to five star hotels do. As a result, customers would have to be content with staying at these hotels with simplicity in lifestyle.

One of the main aspects that customers do consider when contemplating staying at these hotels is the proximity of these hotels in the places they need to go to for business. For example, if the customer needs to go to conferences in certain club houses, they would definitely check out these hotels for consideration. Most of the time, these business travellers travel for pleasure as well. Or, these hotels may be considered to be staying by tourists with limited budgets, who wish to stay at hotels in close proximities of their places of interests such as shopping malls.

The marketing specialists are encouraged to consider targeting the business professionals (who also mix business with pleasure) and tourists with limited budgets in their marketing of these hotels. The specialists should consider marketing these hotels in websites such as Google search. Most of the budget hotels do not have their own web sites, hence, would be hard to get a head start in marketing themselves. The specialists have the task to market these hotels in the most attractive ways possible in order to allow the customers to see the benefits of checking into these hotels.

Marketing Of Two Star Hotels

Two star hotels provide a slight upgrade in terms of services from the services provided by the budget hotels. They provide additional services such as elevators, gyms, business centres and Wi-Fi services. Customers who have the additional cash to spare for these services are usually the ones who patronize the services of these hotels. Competition between two star hotels is tough. Some of these hotels do not provide the same services as their counterparts do due to lack of budget. However, some of these hotels have enough budgets to provide for various services, but are limiting themselves in providing such services because they would like to be thrifty.

The marketing specialists would have to consider factors such as the location of their counterparts in designing marketing plans for their hotels. For example, if their counterparts do have elevators, gyms, business centres and Wi-Fi services, in addition to being located in the business and entertainment hubs, perhaps they should think twice about upgrading their services. By upgrading their services, these hotels would have the chances to gain more clients than their competitors. It is also important to build web sites for their hotels in order to promote the hotels’ existence.

Marketing Of Three To Five Star Hotels

Three to five star hotels are normally patronized by the elite class in the society. The elite class has all the money in the world to spend on purchasing the things that their hearts desire. However, when it comes to choosing the hotels, they still become choosy of the best hotels to stay at. It is important to them that hospitality be met per their standards before staying at a hotel. With this said, as one of the main parts of marketing these hotels, specialists should consider collecting the positive testimonials from customers who have stayed at their hotels and post them at their respective web sites. By doing this, the customers gain faith in the services of the staff of the hotels, and would make them feel that it is worth their money to check into these hotels. Collecting the positive responses from the customers in opinion forms and posting them on their respective websites is also a good means to market the hotels. Customers would feel the efforts made by the past customers to reveal their good experiences at the hotel due to the warmness extended to them by the staff.

Marketing Of Countries’ Tourism

Countries around the world compete for the tourists to come to their country. They always aim to get the most number of tourists to come to their country. Tourists usually choose to go to countries with the highest rates of safety. Tourists also choose to go to countries which they have never been to before. Countries that are popularly known also get a lot of tourists.

The tourism departments usually handle each country’s tourism marketing. They are in charge of making ads such as television and radio commercials advertising the most famous tourist spots in their country. The marketing specialists work within the tourism department in order to come up with ways on how to market their country as a tourist destination.

The marketing specialist in the tourism department also works with the economic sector of the country in order to improve the economy of the country. The country’s economy plays a huge role in improving the tourism of the country. Tourists normally do not like to visit countries that are very poor. This is because poor countries usually do not offer a lot of good tourist attractions to go to. Additionally, poor countries do not have a high safety trend which the tourists fear. With this said, it is also important that marketing specialists work with the task enforcements of the country in order to ensure the safety of the tourists in order to possibly boost tourism.

The president or the prime minister of a country needs to be advised by the marketing specialist from the tourism department as to the needs for the improvement of the country’s tourism trend. The president or the prime minister is the only one who can advise the economic and the task enforcement of the country as to the best things to do in working closely with the marketing specialist in boosting the country’s tourism.

Marketing Of Airlines

The airline industry is in competition in terms of the customers’ preferences which mainly depends upon the city or country of origin that they would be travelling to. The country where the airline is based also likely foretells if they would get a lot of customers to travel with them. If a country where an airline is based houses a population in which a lot of people are poor, they would likely get fewer passengers who are citizens or permanent residents to travel with them. The citizens or permanent residents of the country where the airline is based are usually the ones who patronize the airline.

The season of travel is a factor that affects the travel peaks of all airlines. Summer and Christmas seasons are the usual times that travel times peak in most airlines due to the fact that a lot of students go on their vacations to other towns and cities, or to other countries. It would be of utmost help if countries that are poor where airlines are based give frequent deal offers to their clients in order to boost customer patrons. Airlines are also encouraged to offer deal offers during peak low seasons of travel in order to entice more customers to travel with the airline. Marketing specialists are in charge of preparing the ads for these special offers and post them at the airlines’ website as soon as they become available.

Case Study Of Marketing Of Cebu Pacific Airways Versus Philippine Airlines

The marketing scheme should contain innovative ways in marketing rather than only implement the long known traditional ways of marketing (Lovelock, 1983). Innovative ways of marketing pertains to creative ways of marketing products and services. Common ways of marketing are stagnant, and convey minimal effective success for the marketing of products and services. In the airline industry, the common ways of entertaining the passengers on board have always been in existence in the airlines of the same category. The airline that has a unique way of entertaining the passengers that I know of is the Philippine budget airline, Cebu Pacific Airways.

Cebu Pacific Airways do not offer any amenities in any of its flights due to its limited budget.  However, it offers snacks, hot meals and beverages upon payment while on board. Additionally, the airline offers entertainment features to its passengers to keep them perky during the flight. These entertainment features include the name of a song game. After one of the passengers on board name the song being sung by the flight attendant, the passenger gets to win a prize provided for by the airline. Numerous passengers who prefer to patronize airlines with amenities but let them avail of their tickets at higher prices would usually get swayed with patronizing Cebu Pacific due to its entertainment features on board.

Philippine Airlines is the main competitor of Cebu Pacific. Philippine Airlines’ disadvantage over Cebu Pacific is that it is a non-budget airline. The online marketing scheme of the two airlines is more or less the same. They both have an online web check in available for use by passengers at least 24-48 hours before the flight. Being a non-budget airline, Philippine Airlines has a lot of amenities that passengers can enjoy, at the expense of purchasing expensive tickets. These amenities include mandatory hot meals, movies, radio and free internet services on board.

Philippine Airlines is usually patronized by people who are well off financially that desire the best amenities of an airline. However, a lot of these passengers nowadays may likely select to patronize Cebu Pacific due to its fun entertainment features. Passengers on board do not want monotonous flights. They desire lively and exciting flight experiences. Philippine Airlines would need to improve the uniqueness of their entertainment features on board.

It is imperative to observe the marketing patterns of services relative to the demand and supply (Lovelock, 1983). In the case of the competition between Cebu Pacific and Philippine Airlines, they both compete neck to neck with each other in releasing deal offers in low prices during the low travel seasons. However, Cebu Pacific can offer the lowest deal offer prices given the fact that it is a low-budget airline. Despite the fact that Philippine Airlines offer expensive fares as compared to Cebu Pacific, the former still attracts numerous demand and supply when passengers consider the higher safety security provided for by Philippine Airlines. Low budget airlines are feared for their non-safety measures due to their limited budget.

One more competitive factor existing between the two airlines is the destination the two airlines fly to. For instance, both of the airlines fly to Hong Kong. Factors such as times of flights by the two airlines may affect the choice of customers regularly patronizing Philippine Airlines to possibly fly Cebu Pacific instead. Air fares of the airlines also affect the decisions of the regular passengers of Philippine Airlines to patronize Cebu Pacific instead. If the regular customers of Philippine Airlines suddenly need to budget their money due to urgent reasons, they are likely to choose to fly with Cebu Pacific instead.

The sophistication of the websites of the two airlines also has large impacts on the marketing effectiveness of the airlines. Both of the websites of the airlines basically have all the same sophisticated functions. The only difference between these websites is that the website of Cebu Pacific is more complex to navigate. Its site has more complex navigating buttons as compared to the site of Philippine Airlines, where everything in the site seems self-explanatory. Regular customers of Philippine Airlines who are not that online literate may choose to not patronize Cebu Pacific due to the complexity of its website, which includes the online booking.

Marketing Case Study Of Accor Hotels Versus Mandarin Hotel Groups

The Accor Hotels and the Mandarin Hotel Groups are both luxury hotels with several branches around the world. Chains of hotel groups should take into careful consideration the following factors when marketing their services and products to customers around the world: uncertain economic conditions, increased competitions, advancement in technologies and inflation (Meidan & Lee, 1982). There are times that the economy is not at its par when it comes to its status in countries around the world. Poor people may be seen everywhere, including people who does not have high income. During these times, it is helpful to provide discounts and deals for customers, even in luxury hotels. Even wealthy people budget their money when it comes to hard or difficult times. Wealthy people may opt to save their money for basic necessities rather than spend them on leisure, such as checking into hotels, during difficult economic times. However, they may get enticed to spend on hotel check ins if at least there are discounts on prices of hotel rooms.

Inflation is a factor attributed to negative economic conditions. During these times, a lot of rates in several industries increase. Luxury hotel groups such as Accor and Mandarin may need to increase the rates of their services and products as well. In order to be able to gain customers to patronize their services and products, it is helpful to offer freebies to customers such as buy one take one on drinks during happy hours and special discounts on room rates within certain period duration which covers the inflation period of the country where Accor or Mandarin hotels are located.

There is an existing competition between Accor and Mandarin. Both are luxury hotels, and therefore, more or less, target the same groups of customers around the world. Both of the hotel groups have several amenities to their belt that five star hotels do. However, the distinguishable marketing scheme of Mandarin which Accor does not think of coming up with is having celebrities endorse their hotel groups. Mandarin Oriental negotiates deals with celebrities so as to become fans of the hotel chain group. This marketing plan can definitely boost the sales of Mandarin.

Among the celebrities who endorse Mandarin Hotel Groups are Kevin Spacey, Harry Connick Jr., and Vivienne Tan. These celebrities may endorse Mandarin in magazine and billboard ads, which may also help tremendously in marketing the hotel group. Whenever the potential customers of Mandarin read magazines or pass by certain streets and see Mandarin’s celebrity endorsement, they would likely get enticed to check into a Mandarin Oriental hotel than an Accor hotel.

In interviews with journalists and broadcasters, celebrities who endorse Mandarin are also likely to endorse the hotel group. This possible endorsement gives another boost to the marketing success of Mandarin. With these things said, Mandarin may incur a marketer Accor. Both hotel groups are encouraged to post their deals and special offers on their websites and local newspapers as soon as they become available to attract potential customers quickly.

Conclusion

Numerous companies or organizations have different ways of marketing their products and services. There are no right or wrong ways of marketing. The most important thing in marketing successfully is being able to adjust the marketing styles according to the changes in customers’ situations. It is important that marketing specialists are open-minded in devising different styles of marketing in order to have higher chances of success in marketing success.

Getting help from different sectors in the company is something that a marketing specialist should not be hesitant about doing. Marketing specialists should not have high prides so as to think they can perform their duties well all by themselves. They would likely be willing to do this if they think of their company’s products and services’ welfare before thinking of their own agendas. Marketing specialists need to be creative when devising marketing strategies. It is the key in overcoming the stiff competition existing in the market today.

References:

Lovelock, C.H. (1983). Classifying Services To Gain Strategic Marketing Insights. Journal Of Marketing, 3. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/1251193?uid=3738824&uid=2&uid=4&sid=21102161185037

Meidan, A. & Lee, B. (1982). Marketing Strategies For Hotels. International Journal Of Hospitality Management, 3, 169. Dx.doi.org/10.1016/0278-4319 (82)90007-X