Marketing for Hospitality and Tourism

      Selecting sales promotion tools: The main consumer promotion tools include samples, coupons, premiums, point-of-purchase displays, sweepstakes, and games.

      Samples are offers of a trial amount of a product. Some samples are free. For others, the company charges a small amount to offset its cost.

      The Inn on the Park in Houston invited potential customers and influential community members to stay in the luxury hotel at no charge.

     The promotion accomplished two objectives: (1) salespeople were aided in selling corporate contracts because many of their potential customers had experienced the hotel; and (2) positive word-of-mouth about the hotel was created. Sampling is the most effective but also the most expensive way to introduce a new product. 

14.   Marketing plan

     Managing the marketing function begins with a complete analysis of the company’s situation. The marketer should conduct a SWOT analysis, by which it evaluates the company’s overall strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Strengths include internal capabilities, resources and positive situational factors that may help the company to serve its customers and achieve its objectives. Weaknesses include internal limitations and negative situational factors that may interfere with the company’s performance.             Opportunities are favorable factors or trends in the external environment that the company may be able to exploit to its advantage. And threats are unfavorable external factors or trends that may present challenges to performance.

     The company should analyze its markets and marketing environment to find attractive opportunities and identify environmental threats.

     It should analyze company strengths and weaknesses as well as current and possible marketing actions to determine which opportunities it can best pursue.

     The goal is to match the company’s strengths to attractive opportunities in the environment while eliminating or overcoming the weaknesses and minimizing the threats.

     Internet marketing is integrated with database marketing and direct marketing. Two of the media for direct marketing are the internet using-emails and CD-ROM’s with hyperlinks to the internet.

     Internet marketing captures data which feeds into the firm’s database, the database is used to generate profiles and lists which enable the firm to have effective direct marketing campaigns.

       Direct marketing consists of direct connection with carefully targeted individual consumers to both obtain an immediate response.              Database marketing is a form of direct marketing  using  databases of customers or potential customers to generate personalized communications in order to promote a product or service for marketing purposes. The method of communication can be any addressable medium, as in direct marketing.

     Effective direct marketing begins with a good customer database. Customer database is an organized collection of comprehensive data about individual customers or prospects, including geographic, demographic, psychographic and behavioral data.

15. Direct online marketing (promoting products, advertisements)

     Direct marketing consists of direct connection with carefully targeted individual consumers to both obtain an immediate response.

     The traditional forms of direct marketing used in the hospitality industry are direct-mail marketing, telephone marketing and kiosk marketing.

     Direct-mail marketing involves an offer announcement, remainder or other item to a person at a particular address.  Using highly selective mailing lists, direct marketers send out millions of mail peaces each year: letters, catalogs, ads, brochures, DVDs. Direct mail is well suited to direct one-to-one communication.

     Telephone marketing involves using the telephone to sell directly to consumers and business customers. Outbound telephone marketing sells directly to consumers and businesses. Inbound telephone marketing uses toll-free numbers to receive orders from television and print ads, direct mail and catalogs.

     Kiosk marketing: As consumer become more and more comfortable with computer and digital technologies, many companies are placing information and ordering machines – called kiosks – in stores, airports and other locations. Kiosks are popping up everywhere these days.

     Digital direct marketing technologies includes e-mail, mobile phone marketing, podcasts and vodcasts, and interactive TV(ITV).

     Mobile phone marketing includes:

• Ring-tone giveaways
• Mobile games
• Ad-supported content
• Contests and sweepstakes

     Podcasts and vodcasts involve the downloading of audio and video files via the internet to a handheld device such as a PDA or Ipod and listening to them at the consumer’s convenience.

      Interactive TV lets viewers interact with television programming and advertising using their remote controls and provides marketers with targeted audiences. In the past, ITV has been slow to catch in. However, satellite broadcasting systems such as Direct TV, EchoStar and Time Warner are now offering ITV capabilities.

      Online marketing. Marketing and the internet: internet is the vast public web of computer networks that connects users of all types around the world to each other and to a large information repository.

      Online marketing domains:

      Business to consumer involves selling goods and services online to final consumers.

      Business to business involves selling goods and services, providing information online to businesses, and building customer relationship.

      Consumer to consumer occurs on the Web between interested parties over a wide range of products and subjects. Blogs:

• Offer fresh, original and inexpensive ways to reach fragmented audiences.
• Difficult to control.

      Consumer to business involves consumers communicating with companies to send suggestions and questions via company web sites.