DESTINATION PROMOTION 101

Tourism is highly complex, multi-sectoral industry where no single organisation provides or has control over the entire tourism product. Successful delivery of the wider tourism product is dependent on close working relationship, interdependencies and interactions with numer­ous other stakeholders, enabling the tourism organisation to provide a seamless experience for its customers.

With tourism being increasingly recognised as a key economic opportunity around the world competition among countries and regions for a share of global tourism expenditure is increasing by the day. Potential tourists are faced with a wide range of holiday and business travel choices. To be recognised and to attract their rightful share of the global tourism mar­ket it is of critical importance for destinations to establish a recognised and valued tourism position and brand image in the market. There are three broad approaches companies or des­tinations can follow to establish an advantage over competitors, namely:

• Cost leadership: can be achieved by constantly controlling and reducing costs and improving efficiency of operations, thereby out-priceing competitors,
• Focus: means becoming specialists in a very focused area of activity,
• Differentiation: destination should offer clients a product, service or experience that has a unique value and is different to those alternatives offered by competitors.

While consumer choices of transport modes and booking channels are increasingly affected by cost, their choices of destinations and experiences are increasingly affected by differentiated product. Consumers will consider how destinations are tailored to their needs and how unique these are in relation to other destinations and experiences.

Differentiating the Destination

Destinations must also establish a competitive advantage to out-compete other destinations. Destina­tion may offer the best products and experiences, but unless it is able to create the percep­tion in the minds of potential travellers that it offers something different, better and more appealing than other destinations it may not be in a position to convince travellers to visit.

The key to differentiating the destination is finding a Unique Selling Proposition (USP) and promoting this so as to “own” a unique and valuable tourism attribute(s) in the minds of the current and potential customers. Customer decisions are increasingly influenced by emotional reactions and triggers. In the tourism marketplace, what persuades potential tour­ists to visit and return to one place instead of another is whether they have empathy with the destination and its values. If the destination does not have a USP, another option is to group together or package similar products to develop a Special Selling Propositon (SSP). The USP is increasingly becoming the Unique Emotional Proposition (UEP)

Destination Branding

The destination brand communicates and signals the competitive positioning. A brand could be defined as a unique combination of product characteristics and added values, both tan­gible and non-tangible. The brand is not only a trademark (logo or icon), but an experience and image that signals a value system and positioning. It is a promise of an experience that the visitor can expect from the destination. A successful destination brand depends upon a number of key factors including:

• Brand credibility. The brand promises the costumer a particular value and experience and thus automatically creates an expectation. The experience has to live up to the expectation created for the destination to retain a positive image.
• Deliverable. One of the golden rules of branding is never to over-promise and under-deliver. Brand's designs should be tested to ensure effective, on-the-ground delivery of the brand promise.
• Differentiating. Destinations have to avoid the “me too” trap at all costs. The brand should signal the differentiated positioning and not try to emulate other successful designs or strategies.
• Conveying powerful ideas. Branding is all about the hearts and minds of customers and destinations brands will only be truly successful if they convey concepts, values and destination personality traits that speak powerfully to the mind of the market­place.
• Enthusing for trade partners. The Destination Management Organisations alone will not be able to roll out and communicate the brand proposition. In successful destina­tions the private sector is the driver of tourism, under government destination lead­ership. A winning brand should be strongly endorsed and used by the private sector in the destination.
• Resonating with the consumer. Even an award-winning, creative brand design will not be truly successful unless the brand resonates with the customers, encouraging them to visit and converting “lookers” to “bookers”.

To develop a successful brand, destinations initially need to fully understand their target­ed customer. A destination may have many different experiences and products to offer, each of which will appeal to different markets. The branding process should focus attention on their key target markets. Therefore research is required to fully identify and understand the primary target markets. In the past, market research has focused on finding out what visi­tor wants and not finding out why? The destination can get ahead of its competitors if it finds out why, by understanding the emotional factors that determine the preferences of its poten­tial visitors.

Before embarking on a brand building process it is important for the destination managers to clearly establish a strategic direction on an inspiring future vision on what basis will the destination differentiate itself from its competitors and obtain a fundamental market positioning. In the process of building the brand there are five key phases:

1. Image investigation
2. Brand identity development
3. Brand design
4. Brand launch and communication
5. Brand management.

For the brand to be authentic and deliver on its promise the local community and the stakeholders should believe in it and live it. It is a well-known fact that the best brand cham­pions are citizens, but they could also be the worst enemies, especially if they do not sub­scribe to brand essence. A special effort is required to communicate and advocate the brand internally. One of the most important vehicles for internalising the brand is to capacitate and enthuse leadership figures to be brand ambassadors and infuse the brand values within the broader society.

Market Segmentation

New destinations appear every year. To have any chance of standing out in a busy market­place, destinations must be single-minded on focusing on those people who they are most likely to be able to attract and who are most likely to purchase a destination's tourism goods and services. Market segmentation is the starting point for devising a marketing strategy and is a process which categorises people into groups where they share certain definable characteristics. There are several reasons to segment a market:

• Only a small percentage of the world's population takes an international trip in any one year.
• Demand for tourism goods and services is not equally distributed throughout a pop­ulation.
• Minorities within a population are often likely to consume a disproportionately high volume of tourism product.
• It is necessary to develop the product according to the customer's needs, wants and desires.
• Segmentation helps inform which marketing channels and media are the right ones.

The key to effective target marketing is to:

• Identify groups of people (segments) who are, or will be, in the market for an inter­national trip.
• Decide whether these are the people who, if they visited, would help fulfil the desti­nation's tourism objectives.
• Establish whether the destination has the appropriate products and services to meet their needs.
• Establish their motivations/triggers, buying habits, etc.
• Persuade them to visit using appropriate and targeted marketing messages and chan­nels.
• Evaluate and review the impact of the marketing on the segments that have been tar­geted

Target Markets

 For most National Tourist Organisation, the foundation for good segmentation is based on the collection of inbound tourism statistical data. Tourism visitor surveys appear to provide the most fruitful source of identifying current tourism segments that visit the host destination.

Once an NTO is in possession of the basic statistical and qualitative data required to dis­aggregate its source market(s), it is in a position to begin a process of segmentation, which means identifying those groups of customers within a market(s) that share a range of com­mon characteristics and selecting those that it wishes to target. Having identified a range of segments, NTO(s) are faced with the challenge of deciding which of these offer the best prospects for contributing to the tourism objectives of their destinations.

Once target markets are selected, NTOs go about marketing to these markets. Some run campaigns/activities aimed at similar segments in different markets. Many NTOs rely heav­ily upon third parties to advise them on appropriate communication channels and imagery/ messages with which to reach targeted segments. These parties can be: PR agencies, trav­el writers/journalists, marketing experts, on-territory NTO staff, research agencies, tour operators, trade publications, especially for niche segments, competitor analyses, consumer exhibitions/shows, desk research, evaluation study results...etc