Positioning the Destination Product-Can Regional Tourist Boards Learn from Private Sector Practice?

This article examines the role of positioning in the marketing of a tourism destination. The study focuses on the current positioning strategies pursued by the Regional Tourist Boards (RTBs) in England. A recent nationwide consumer research study into short holiday destination choice in the UK revealed that consumers were confused by the regional product message. The evidence suggests that current RTB positioning strategies are failing to keep pace with the constantly evolving needs of the consumer. This article explores the reasons for clearly positioning the destination product and suggests that, although RTBs could learn from marketing strategies employed in other sectors of the tourism industry, there are likely to be organisational and cultural barriers inhibiting this learning curve

THE FUTURE OF HOSPITALITY AND TOURISM IN ROMANIA DEPENDS ON THE HUMAN RESOURCES

Hospitality and tourism represent a profession, and to understand hospitality and tourism means to have certain skills, requiring training and experience in the field. However, many people are involved in it directly or indirectly and must know the basic principles. Local planning authorities, regional and national planning authorities of almost all ministries and departments are in some way directly or indirectly involved in the organization and development of tourism. Some decisions of planning are in opposition with the objectives of tourism development; some development strategies affect the sustainable development of tourism. Tourism development is something very sensitive, because tourism is one of the most competitive business activities in the world. Tourism development is not automatic, because it is linked to the image and reputation. The sustainable and successful tourism requires cooperation between all the factors of responsibility and requires the formation of partnerships between the public sector, which should support tourism, and the private sector, which should provide facilities and services for different markets and market segments Without understanding the mutual objectives and issues, tourism will not develop satisfactorily and will not be beneficial.tourism, hospitality, tourist industry, human resources, sustainable

Promotion of inclusive tourism by national destination management organizations

Rita, P., & António, N. (2020). Promotion of inclusive tourism by national destination management organizations. Worldwide Hospitality and Tourism Themes, 12(6), 701-714. https://doi.org/10.1108/WHATT-07-2020-0068Purpose: Inclusive tourism has the potential to counter balance some of the disadvantages relating to tourism development and effectively exert positive impacts on society at large and specifically on tourist destinations. However, there is a research gap in studies on inclusiveness related to the promotional efforts of national destination management organizations. Design/methodology/approach: Data science-based methods, mainly text mining and image mining, were used to analyze both the explicit and implicit content in text and images in the English brochures published by nine European official destination management organizations. Findings: Results highlighted that the countries' attitudes towards inclusion were aligned with what the countries’ destination management organizations were promoting, especially in the case of highly ranked countries on an inclusiveness index. However, there were differences between their explicit content (what they write in text) and their implicit content (what they show in images). Originality/value: The combined analysis of text and image content allowed for a complete understanding as to how national’s destination management organizations are promoting inclusion, showing that destination management organizations should make an effort in improving their promotional material and above all the images they use.authorsversionpublishe

Stretching ties: social capital in the rebranding of Coos County, New Hampshire

Place rebranding is gaining in popularity as cities and rural communities alike attempt to expand their revenue streams through innovative marketing strategies that seek to revitalize or create tourism destinations. These efforts tend to come about as part of an economic development strategy pursued by communities that have borne steep economic losses resulting from global economic restructuring and the decline in traditional manufacturing, agriculture, and natural-resource extraction. Author Michele Dillon explores the role of social capital in rural wealth generation by focusing on how it was used to advance place rebranding in Coos County in northern New Hampshire

Translated visual guides aimed at tourists: conveyance of the visual text

This paper deals with the translation of the touristic website genre and more specifically the localisation of websites. Furthermore, the use of maps online as multilingual guides to attract visitors will be discussed. Six websites, one per each of the most important cities of the Autonomous Community of Galicia have been analysed. This study will reveal how several linguistic and visual strategies were involved in the creation of colourful, inspiring,and relaxing websites which make use of concise texts and maps throughout some of the thematic links. Also, the role of public institutions will be accounted for since these have a major impact on the resources available to create these visual guides and promote touristic destinations.Esta investigação visa apresentar uma análise da tradução do género “site turístico” e, em particular, da localização de websites. Abordará também o uso de mapas multilingues em Internet como guia e ferramenta para a atração de turistas. O trabalho analisa seis websites que descrevem seis das cidades mais importantes da Galiza e mostra os esforços linguísticos e visuais para criar uma serie de sites coloridos, inspiradores e relaxantes com textos concisos e mapas que se distribuem ao longo de algumas das ligações temáticas. Finalmente, destaca o papel das instituições públicas enquanto entidades que distribuem os recursos disponíveis para criar estes guias e promover os diferentes destinos turísticos.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

MARKETING COMMUNICATION IN THE VISIT PHASE THROUGH GUEST.NET - AN INDESTINATION, LOCATION-BASED SYSTEM AT MAISTRA HOTEL CHAIN IN CROATIA

Hoteliers have always endeavoured to retain guests within their facilities, to profit maximally by offering them additional services. Informing guests of various options is performed within in-house marketing techniques, whereas some are ICT based. Purpose. Hotel chain websites are aimed at the acquisition of guests and as such are inadequate for displaying detailed, service and current information that guests need during their stay in a tourist destination (e.g. happy hour offer at the lobby bar). What about information provided to guests once in the tourist destination? This paper will present one such solution: the Guest.net. It is an in-destination, location-based website accessible from all Maistra Inc. properties, representing a good solution for hotel chains with various nearby positioned tourism facilities aimed at retaining guests within chain facilities. Design/Methodology/Approach. The approach used in this paper is the case study method. Findings and Implications. Klante, Kroschel and Bolls theoretical information model (2004) was expanded by adding the planning in situ phase in tourism. Benefits of the application of similar guest services for hotel chains have been listed. Limitations. Limitations steam from the case study method and relate to the minor geographical area researched. Originality. There is an evident lack in research of customers in tourism during the visit phase, regarding their decision making process, especially in the evaluation of alternatives and their purchase decision in situ (Law, Buhalis, Cobanoglu, 2014), thus this paper broadens the identified gap in the information collection phase in the destination

Information Technology Applications in Hospitality and Tourism: A Review of Publications from 2005 to 2007

The tourism and hospitality industries have widely adopted information technology (IT) to reduce costs, enhance operational efficiency, and most importantly to improve service quality and customer experience. This article offers a comprehensive review of articles that were published in 57 tourism and hospitality research journals from 2005 to 2007. Grouping the findings into the categories of consumers, technologies, and suppliers, the article sheds light on the evolution of IT applications in the tourism and hospitality industries. The article demonstrates that IT is increasingly becoming critical for the competitive operations of the tourism and hospitality organizations as well as for managing the distribution and marketing of organizations on a global scale

THEORETICAL CONCEPT OF PROMOTION OPTIMIZATION MODEL FOR HIGHER EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS (UNIPOM)

There has been an increasing importance of using marketing communication tools not only for corporate goals but also for higher educational goals. Yet there is a lack in conscious, effective usage of these tools. On the one hand a reason is that many higher educational institutions have no marketing strategy at all and on the other hand there is a shortage of methodology in optimizing marketing communication tools. Beside lack of marketing strategy, further problem is that from the marketing tools available, higher educational institutions can only change their communication in short term. Shortage in financial resources that can be spent on communication makes matters worse. Beside shortage in financial sources another problem is the scare of time available for the potential students to evaluate all the information available about university choice. Therefore it is important to find out which marketing communication tools and which media to use, who to address the given message with determined content and when to use the given tools during the recruitment process. To solve the above mentioned problems, an optimization is needed for marketing communication tools that also considers scare of financial resources and the habits of potential students when searching for information about their future universities. UNIPOM is a solution to this problem

A discursive analysis of women’s femininities within the context of Tunisian tourism

Tourism has been hailed as a vehicle for gender equality and women’s empowerment and yet the relationship between these is far from simple. As tourism is created in already gendered societies, the ability of the industry to empower is shaped by existing gender norms and discourses. Therefore utilising a postcolonial feminist frame, the primary focus of this thesis is to critically explore both the discursive role of tourism and its influence in (re)constructing feminine identities in Tunisia. Informed by the works of Michel Foucault, and postcolonial feminism a critical discourse analysis is performed to identify discourses on femininity within the (re)presentations of Tunisian women in the Tunisian National Tourism Office’s brochures and website. Critical discourse analysis often risks disempowering the communities it seeks to analyse and as such fifteen semi-structured, in-depth interviews were carried out with Tunisian women involved in the Tunisian tourism industry. The interviews were shaped by a terrorist attack targeting tourists that had happened just two weeks before. Interestingly both the promotional materials and the interviews display two particular discourses on femininity, the modern and uncovered daughter of Bourguiba, and the southern covered Other. Of these discourses, it is the daughter of Bourguiba who is privileged and the southern veiled Other who is excluded. These discourses have been fomented since independence from France in 1956 and the rule of President Habib Bourguiba, but they still have a very material impact on the lives of Tunisian women today as evidenced in the interviews. This thesis contributes to both tourism and postcolonial studies in its problematisation of the connotation of Othering as essentially negative. When discourses of the Other shaping (re)presentations refrain from the construction of a monolithic categorisation, they can be more inclusive than discourses of similarity, which exclude all Others. This is linked to host self (re)presentation being intimately entwined within a system of both local and global politics, when cross-cultural (re)presentations are removed from at least some of these. The use of photo elicitation is developed to gain an understanding of how those (re)presented view those (re)presentations, but also to overcome linguistic and cultural barriers