Promotion

Advertising

• Advertising is understood as the mass transmission of information in the form of paid announcements by the seller, conducted (durchgeführt) through various communication channels.

Definition of advertising objectives:

• Establish the objectives of the advertising campaign that are intended to be communicated.

• Example: stimulating demand, contributing to developing or reinforcing a particular image of the destination or the company, etc.

Identification of the target audience:

• Determine the individuals we want to reach with our message, the target audience.

Determination of the available budget:

• The budget can be determined based on a percentage of sales, investing the same as competitors, or tailored to the desired objective.

Message design:

• This phase involves the creative aspect of the campaign, usually handled by an advertising agency

Media planning:

• Decide where the advertisements will be placed. Choose the media that can most easily reach our audience.

Temporal periodization:

• Establish the launch, duration of the campaign, and timing, i.E., The insertion of advertisements and the temporal sequence.

Companies and tourist organizations use the same promotional tools as other sectors of economic activity

Specific aspects of the tourism sector that need to be taken into account

Intangibility of tourism services:

• Intangibility of tourism services poses a challenge for their promotion and communication, requiring the visualization of the intangible.

Prominent role of public administrations:

• plays a significant role in tourism promotion, particularly in the case of destinations.

• Necessitates collaboration between private and public operators to enhance the effectiveness of promotional efforts.

Greater importance of certain promotional actions: 

• Certain promotional actions carry more weight in comparison to other sectors (such as familiarization trips, tourism fairs, public relations, brochures, and catalogs)

Relative lower weight of advertising:

• Advertising holds a much lower relative importance in this sector compared to other consumer goods

Significance of word-of-mouth:

• The importance of the opinions of family and friends is emphasized in the tourism sector.

• Objective of Public Relations (PR) is to achieve the dissemination (Verbreitung), through the media, of favorable information

• These information contributes to improving the image of the company or destination and its products or services

• It is a form of free, unpaid communication

Primarily three PR techniques are employed:

• Publicity

• Sponsorship

• Tourism Fairs

• Familiarization Trips

• Public Relations in Tourism

• Managing news about individuals, products, or events of the company to ensure their positive appearance in the media.

• To achieve this goal, it resorts to:

  • Press releases

    • the most common, quick, and cost-effective way to deliver information to the media.

    • Typical for new investments, products, awards received, visits from important clients, etc.

  • Press conferences

    • convened when the news to be presented is truly significant, leading to direct questions from the press.

• Allows associating and promoting a brand or product image using an event attractive to a specific target audience

• Each tourism organization or company should resort to events that best align with their image in terms of type, size, and audience.

• This form of promotion increases the credibility (Glaubwürdigkeit) of the organization or company because it involves supporting an event seemingly selflessly (selbstlos), without direct advertising.

• Provide several advantages to exhibiting companies

  • Including a closer approach to tourism service products

  • A more favorable buying attitude from visitors

  • A reduction in the cost per contract due to the brief duration of interactions compared to the normal lengthy process.

• Free trips and stays in the destination or company facilities, used to introduce tourism products and their features to intermediaries, journalists, and opinion leaders.

• This tool is employed when

  • positively influencing these groups is desired,

  • showcasing improvements innovations and resolving potential crisis situations due to the dissemination of negative news about the company or organization.

• Encompasses (umfasst) all activities that, through the use of material or economic incentives (Anreize), aim to stimulate short- term demand for a tourism product or service

Key aspects:

•  Includes an incentive to increase the desire to purchase

  among tourist consumers

• Achieves rapid response results, provided the promotional

  period is short and correct in its repetition rhythms.

• Is self-financing, as the cost of the promotion is offset by increases in sales.

• Must take care of the tourism image of the product.

Primary objective:

• Increase sales

• used to manage seasonality issues in the sector when an excess of capacity is expected

• address various marketing problems

  • such as supporting the launch of a new product, increasing sales, incentivizing tourist loyalty, and reacting to competitive marketing actions.

• Conducted by salespeople

• Therefor: Can be defined as a form of oral and interactive communication that conveys information directly and personally to a specific potential customer.

Role of personal selling in tourism:

• fundamental function and the importance of the salesperson is crucial, as they significantly contribute to creating the company's image.

• The salesperson represents the company and interacts with potential buyers

Types of personal selling in tourism:

• Sales through intermediaries

• Internal sales

• Direct sale

Sales through intermediaries

• Involves direct contact and systematic follow-up with travel

  agencies, tour operators, etc.

Internal sales

• Anyone in contact with the customer can be a salesperson, including those at the counter, reception, restaurant, etc.

Direct sales:

• Salespeople leave the company when negotiating with other businesses or buyers with capacity, such as tour operators.

• These sales can also occur (auftreten) without salespeople traveling, as in the case of direct phone reservations or through computerized systems.

• Intensive use of all kinds of printed materials, such as

  brochures and catalogs

• One of the main characteristics of tourism promotion

• Production and distribution of this type of promotional material constitute one of the most significant items in their marketing budgets

Challenges

• to ensure that these massive investments in printed material truly impact the target audience and do so at the desired moment, as a considerable portion of this material never reaches the consumer.

Role of brochures and catalogs in the marketing of tourism companies

Act as substitutes for the product:

• This function is a consequence of the intangibility and

  inseparability of tourism products

Support for distributor sales personnel:

• For distributor sales personnel since customer information demands are high. It is more efficient to provide information through written support, allowing sales staff to address queries, reducing the time spent with each customer.

Promotional purpose as a substitute or complement to

advertising actions:

• Costs of advertising are unsustainable, so they opt for brochures to maximize the dissemination (Verbreitung) of their products. They also serve to promote special offers.

Inform consumers about product characteristics in a concrete,

precise, and detailed manner:

• No other communication tool can convey information as

  detailed as a brochure.

Contractual element acting as a guarantee of what will be

received:

• In case of package tours or travel packages, brochures act as legal proof of the contracted service. This allows consumers to claim compensation

Transmission of information about the organization and

optimal use of the product/service offered:

• Brochures inform customers about the existence of auxiliary (Hilfsmittel) or complementary products, special offers, provide information on service usage, and offer any useful information about the trip, stay, or circuit.