1. Marketing in Travel & Tourism
Unit #5 – Learning Outcome 4
Using the promotional mix in travel
and tourism
THE ROLE OF THE PROMOTIONAL MIX
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2. Integrated Marketing Communications
(IMC) Strategies
•
Advertising, public relations (PR) and sales promotion have always
been the most visible outputs of travel and tourism marketing, but
not the most important or the largest elements in the marketing
budget.
• In the 21st century the Internet has become the distribution channel
of course, and websites are now the centre of most travel and
tourism businesses marketing communications activities.
• Traditional media however still plays a part, particularly for larger
organizations such as airlines and hotel groups who use print media
to communicate with shareholders, politicians or the financial sector.
• This use of new technologies combined with traditional media forms
part of an integrated marketing communications strategy. (IMC)
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3. Integrated Marketing Communications
The concept under which a company carefully
integrates and co-ordinates its many
communications channels to deliver a clear,
consistent and compelling message about the
organization and its products.
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4. Principles of IMC
• Every time the consumer comes into contact
with the organization they should receive the
same clear, consistent message about the
brand. (brand consistency)
• This applies to the use of the corporate logo, the
colours, the positioning of the product, the
messages in advertising, the style of ads, the
stories or editorials produced for publication –
down to the uniforms worn by staff of the
company.
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5. Why use a range of promotional
tools?
•
People in developed countries are increasingly sophisticated in their
consumer behaviour and less likely to be persuaded by ‘hard-sell’
advertising techniques
•
It is harder for companies to establish unique selling points or
differentiate themselves in the market
•
Proliferation of media outlets has let to intense competition for
audiences and advertising spend
•
The audience is fragmented and advertising has to be spread over
many outlets in order to reach the target market
•
Media advertising may not be the most cost-effective way of
reaching the target market
•
Better to avoid presumptions in favour of any one promotional tool
and select the most appropriate one for the objectives of each
specific campaign
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6. The use of traditional agencies
•
Traditionally a business would engage an advertising/PR agency
who would design, manage and implement complete range of
services from campaign planning, creative design through to media
buying and evaluation research, PR, sales promotion, and brochure
design.
•
Today companies can buy services from competing specialist
agencies offering just one of the functions, or handle many of these
activities in-house.
•
This has cost advantages and puts the business in direct control of
their marketing, but can dilute the message through a number of
unrelated and uncoordinated ideas and executions.
•
IMC advocates the use of a single full-service agency or strong
control by the client company in order to ensure a unified marketing
communications strategy.
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7. 3 levels of IMC
•
Integration of marketing objectives and messages across the range
of promotional tools and communications channels
•
Integration of coordination of the marketing work within the company
and its agencies supplying marketing services
•
The integration of the one-to-many communications of the company
with its one-to-one contacts with the customers throughout their
relationship with the company.
•
This level of integration requires input from the marketers, the PR
department (where there is one involved) and with the departments
responsible for sales and operations as they are the front line of the
company’s interaction with its customers.
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8. The Dimensions of Marketing
Communications
•
Promotional materials include advertising, PR, direct-marketing,
sponsorship and sales promotion.
•
Advertising includes any paid-for communication in media aimed at
the public, traditionally TV, radio, print (eg newspapers and
magazines), film or video, poster sites, and now websites and other
digital and social media.
•
Advertising is paid-for ‘space’ using carefully controlled messages
by an organization.
•
PR seeks to obtain publicity for a company and its products through
news stories and features and the company does not have direct
control over the way messages are used.
•
Media advertising involves the ‘one-to-many’ approach (one
message distributed to many people) whereas direct marketing
involves one-to-one communications with customers through the
mail, internet or telephone.
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9. Monitoring and Evaluating
Advertising Effectiveness
“Half of my advertising spend is wasted - I just don't know which half!“
•
Smart marketers monitor their advertising spend and compare the expenditure with
the revenue or sales it generates.
•
When the advertising/marketing is designed to ‘build the brand’, inform the market
about the company, raise the company profile, inform the potential customers of new
products etc, it is very difficult to calculate a precisereturn on the marketing
investment.
•
It is also difficult to precisely measure the true effectiveness of advertising as there
are so many external factors to take into consideration such as the weather, political
or other global events that might dominate people’s thoughts and plans.
•
Response measurement in ads may have some coding that identifies the media
used, date of insertion. Replies are assessed against the original expenditure.
Response coupons used to be very popular in travel and tourism but are being
phased out since online activity is so dominant.
It is easy to measure online response though website applications and data bases
that gather not only the contact and personal details of enquirers but the channel
through which they accessed any particular business website or product.
•
•
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10. The Promotional Mix:
The main Tools of IMC
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11. Advertising
• Advertising is any paid form of non-personal
presentation and promotion of ideas, goods or services
to a targeted audience by an identified sponsor.
• The advantage of paid-for advertising is that the
advertiser has full control over the message content, and
depending on the budget, can choose ad size, position
and insertion frequency.
• The cost of media advertising and the difficulties of being
noticed and remembered among so many other
competing messages are also drawbacks, particularly for
organizations with limited budgets.
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12. Advertising Objectives
Typical objectives will include:
•
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Creating awareness
Informing
Persuading
Reminding
• Objectives must be fixed to a specified time period and
measurement.
• Some advertising in travel and tourism is designed to
stimulate ‘immediate’ action, ie the ordering of a
brochure or the purchase of the product!
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13. The Role of Advertising
Agencies
•
Small businesses often undertake their own advertising, and in New Zealand
this is very common. Profit margins are low and using an advertising agency
adds to the marketing cost.
•
A small business may use a company to purchase advertising space on their
behalf but they still create their own ads.
•
Advertising agencies can achieve lower costs through ‘bulk buying’ on behalf of
their clients, and their knowledge of the industry is invaluable when preparing ad
campaigns.
•
A typical advertising agency is involved in creative planning, development of
concepts and ideas, design and production of visual materials, media planning,
scheduling and buying, monitoring and evaluation of advertising performance.
•
Ad agencies are usually selected through a competitive tender process and
once selected build-up a long term relationship with their clients.
•
Ad agencies will appoint an account director or executive who liaises between
the agency team and the client.
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14. PR in Travel and Tourism
• Complementary to media advertising
• Helps to develop credibility across an organization
• Seeks to raise the company’s visibility through media
relations
• Tourism is subject to both positive and negative publicity
due to the high profile of the industry
• A need for tourism organizations to be seen to behave
responsibility towards the natural and social environment
• Successful PR needs a planned and budgeted
programme
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15. Measuring the results of PR
•
Evaluation of PR results should be against the objectives for the
programme. Activities usually include:
•
Media content analysis involving:
 the counting of column centimeters of media coverage obtained in
any given period or relating to any specific programme. The column
centimeters are costed out at the rate that would have been charged
had the coverage been paid-for advertising. The $$ amount is the
‘value’ of the free coverage.
 A key word count which monitors the number of times an
organization’s name or brand is mentioned. Much of that can now
be handled via Google alerts whereby Google emails a user any
links to content containing words they have identified as requiring
alerts.
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16. Sponsorship
•
Sponsorship is a business relationship between a provider of funds, resources or services and an
individual, event or organisation, which offers in return, rights and association that may be used
for commercial advantage
Sleight, 1989
•
Sponsorship can be closely related to advertising in that it involves paying in
order to communicate to a selected target audience a message about the brand
through its association with the event.
The sponsorship itself may only give the right to display the brand name and
logo eg on clothing, buildings, at rugby games
In reality sponsors will also have their brand featured in associated literature
and promotional material.
Expenditure on sponsorship has grown rapidly in recent years due to a range of
factors:
It is seen in a context where competitors are excluded
It can reach audiences difficult to reach through other media
It creates favourable brand associations with exciting and prestigious events
It appeals across linguistic and cultural barriers
Sponsorship can also create goodwill among the public through sponsoring
community or cultural events, thus regarded as a PR activity
Also used as an opportunity for corporate hospitality and entertaining
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17. Sales Promotion + Merchandising
•
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Sales promotion involves a range of tactical marketing techniques designed within a strategic
marketing framework to add value to a product or service in order to achieve specific sales or
marketing objectives
Merchandising is any practice which contributes to the sale of products to a retail consumer. At a
retail in-store level, merchandising refers to the variety of products available for sale and the
display of those products in such a way that it stimulates interest and entices customers to make
a purchase.
•
The travel and tourism sector product is ‘intangible’ with no physical product to display, so the
retail store (travel agent, airline office, visitor information centre etc) relies on displaying supplier
materials (print and non print) in such a way as to be eye catching and appealing.
•
Much of sales promotion takes place at the point of sale in the form of merchandising eg the
displaying of brochures, use of posters or videos, setting up of window displays.
•
Price based promotions are used to stimulate sales, and offer the consumer a reduction in price
or feature new extras for no additional cost. These ‘price cuts’ are easy for competitors to copy
and risk provoking a price war. Price cuts can also devalue the image of the product with low
price being equated with low quality. There is also the real risk of customers coming to expect the
lower price, making it difficult to increase it again.
•
Added-value packages also stimulate sales, and avoid some of these dangers provided they
enhance the product and reinforce the brand
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18. Brochures and Printed
Collateral
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19. The use of brochures in travel
and tourism
•
Brochures and other print materials represent the third distinctive group of
marketing communications for a planned marketing campaign, in addition to
advertising/PR and sales promotion and merchandising.
•
Travel and tourism relied heavily on printed materials until the advent and
growth of the internet.
•
The design, distribution and large volume use of printed items has been a
major distinguishing feature of travel and tourism marketing.
•
Concerns over wastage, cost savings, the need to adapt to a more fluid
pricing model, and consumer demand for continuous access to up to date
information 24/7 has contributed to the shift to web based materials.
•
Brochures are now available online, easy to read and navigate,
downloadable, printable, with consumers being able make notes within a
brochure, email it to a friend, ‘like’ it or save it to a wish list for further
browsing later.
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20. Stages in producing effective
information materials
•
Determining the size, profile and needs of the target audience through market segmentation
and the marketing planning process. Print volume is based on objectives in the marketing plan.
•
Marketing strategy, branding and positioning – print and website materials are planned
together with coordinated messages, images and positioning.
•
Paper quality, choice of colours, density of copy and graphics along with style and density of
photographs matching images to selected target audiences, ensuring images can be scaled for
online use.
•
Specifying brochure/website/objectives. Clarify what the brochure or website is expected to
achieve in the campaign.
•
Deciding the method of distribution. Cost of distribution often exceeds cost of print production
(ITC example of the brochure costing $8 and the ‘pizza box’ that contained it for mailing cost
$10!). Travel and tourism operators have to choose distribution options that meet objectives but
minimize cost.
•
Creative execution. The way in which product concepts and images are
•
Timing. Most printed material are required to be available for distribution at specific times of the
year (in booking seasons, which vary depending on which part of the world the operator is
located). It takes several weeks from the issuing of the initial brief to the agency or printer to final
production of print. Websites can be much more readily created and amended, edited and
updated, and with minimal cost. For operators in a fluid pricing market context website flexibility is
an attractive option as changing prices after materials are printed is extremely costly and time
consuming.
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21. Personal Selling
Word of mouth is one of the key factors
influencing the final choice of
destination
(Collier, 2006)
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22. Personal Selling in NZ Tourism
•
Research (Lim, 1981) examining the role of promotions in the decision of tourists to visit New
Zealand determined that advertising influenced the actual decision in only 17% of cases whilst
73% of respondents felt that personal communication was the most important variable in the
decision to visit New Zealand.
•
Personal selling (word of mouth) seems to be the most powerful promotional tool with regard to
the actual purchase decision.
•
1995 research looked at methods by which clients came to use a particular service or amenity:
80% of all customers using services provided by businesses within the tourism industry in New
Zealand did so as a result of recommendations from friends, families and others.
•
Tourism NZ has been aware of the importance of personal selling for more than a decade and
has integrated activities to address this key area of influence in its markets.
•
Personal selling initiatives undertaken by Tourism NZ include:

The operation of overseas offices in NZ’s key generating markets, staffed by a sales and
marketing team who regularly promoted NZ o the trade (travel agents and operators) in those
markets.
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Personal selling also occurs at trade shows and exhibitions attended by Tourism NZ staff in
addition to representatives from other NZ tourism organizations.
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Personal selling via distribution agents is facilitated by Tourism NZ who organize educational trips
to NZ so travel agents can experience the product first hand. These visits are part of the
International Media Programme (IMP)
Collier, 2006
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