Destination Marketing

Essentials

Steven Pike

• Editore: Routledge
• Anno: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000200935
• Edizione: 3
• Argomento: Business
• Categoria: Business General

Destination Marketing offers the reader an integrated and comprehensive overview of the key challenges and constraints facing destination marketing organisations (DMOs) and how destination marketing can be planned, implemented and evaluated to achieve successful destination competitiveness.

This new third edition has been revised and updated to include:

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• 27 new and updated case studies, including destinations such as Sri Lanka, Barbados, the UAE, and crucially relevant topics such as the Australian bushfires and the threat of COVID-19

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• Brand-new pedagogical features such as in-chapter class activities, key term definitions, and highlighted critical points

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• New content on cross-sector consortia marketing for meetings and events, social media influencer marketing, the role of technology, resource consumption and climate change, creativity and innovation in developing destination branding, experiential destination marketing and the influence of culture and sustainability on destination marketing

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• Links to free access of the author's journal articles on destination marketing

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• Updated additional online resources for lecturers and students including PowerPoint slides, quizzes and discussion questions

It is written in an engaging style and applies theory to a range of tourism destinations at the consumer, business, national and international level by using topical examples.

Chapter 1

The study of destination marketing

Learning aims

To enhance your understanding of:

• the rationale for the study of destination marketing
• the extent of academic literature relating to destination marketing
• the divide between tourism academics and practitioners

Abstract

The politics, challenges and constraints faced by destination marketers are very different to those faced by individual tourism businesses. Destination marketers must achieve a competitive market position for their multi-attributed place, in many different geographic markets of interest to stakeholders, in a rapidly changing macro-environment that is crowded with competing places offering similar features and benefits. The complexity of this challenge is magnified by the active interest in destination promotions and results, by a diverse, dispersed and eclectic range of stakeholders with a vested interest in visitor arrivals. An understanding of destination marketing is essential for anyone working in, or contemplating, a managerial or entrepreneurial career in tourism. The success of individual tourism-related businesses is reliant to some extent on the competitiveness of the destination in which they are located or supply services to. A major contributing factor to destination competitiveness is being effectively organised, in the form of a well-resourced and well-managed destination marketing organisation (DMO) that has strong collaborative relationships with government, media, local businesses, travel intermediaries and host community. Understanding the DMO perspective can better equip entrepreneurs to take advantage of opportunities in destination promotions, distribution and product development, thereby enhancing their own success, which in turn can contribute to the competitiveness of the destination. A key theme throughout the book is the challenge of differentiating a destination from competing places, in markets where consumers are spoilt for choice. What is critical is the need for a market orientation, where all marketing decisions are made with the target consumers in mind. While it is in the interests of destination marketers to appreciate the depth of relevant published academic tourism research, it is essential that tourism academics and students appreciate that the complex realities of real-world destination marketing practice often render the application of theory and research recommendations as easier said than done.

Key terms

• Destination
  From the demand perspective, travellers and the travel trade perceive a destination as a geographic area, which might be as small as a city precinct or as large as a continent. From the supply-side, however, a destination is usually defined by a geo-political boundary, from which the tax regime provides funding for destination marketing.
• Destination marketing
  The process by which a destination marketing organisation (DMO) matches the destination’s strengths with macro-environment opportunities, and minimises destination weaknesses in relation to macro-environment threats, to achieve a competitive market position.
• Destination marketing organisation
  The entity responsible for coordinating the holistic, impartial and collaborative promotion of a geo-political boundary, to enhance destination competitiveness and therefore the economic, social and cultural well-being of the wider host community.

Background

The first destination marketing organisations predate the tourism destination marketing academic literature by over a century. For example, Switzerland’s first regional tourism organisation (RTO) was established at Saint Moritz in 1864 (Laesser, 2000), while the first English-language destination marketing journal articles were published in the early 1970s (see Gearing, Swart, & Var, 1974; Hunt, 1975; Matejka, 1973; Riley & Palmer, 1975). The ensuing years of published research in our field now represents a rich resource, which is valuable in enhancing understanding of how marketing principles might or might not apply in the real world for destination marketers. It is hoped this literature is also a valuable reference for the tourism industry. However, little has been reported about the real-world impacts that tourism academic research has made on industry best practice. For a comprehensive review of the first 40 years of the destination marketing academic literature see Pike and Page (2014).

Critical point

The relevance of old references

It often surprises me when a reviewer of a journal manuscript comments along the lines of “Some of your references are quite old”. There are two categories of old references in this book. First, I acknowledge pioneers of research fields and the original developers of theories. This is important because most of our current research about destination marketing is underpinned by those who came before us, and we should acknowledge their contributions. We stand on the shoulders of giants. Second, I cite old references to industry practice, which are relevant for DMOs today. We can learn much from the mistakes and successes of our predecessors.

Activity

1.1 – We stand on the shoulders of giants

Search for the meaning of Isaac Newton’s famous metaphor, We stand on the shoulders of giants, for how progress towards knowledge is made. How is this relevant to destination marketing today?

Destination Marketing: Essentials is underpinned by my 40+ years’ passion for tourism; the first two decades working in the travel industry, and then the time since as a researcher and teacher. While this gives me the benefit of first-hand experience observing how marketing principles apply in real-world settings, my personal experience also carries inherent biases. Whether we are destination marketers, tourism business managers, local taxpayers, academics or students, we often view a situation from different perspectives, sometimes resulting in different opinions. Therefore, not everyone will agree with all my views, and that is healthy. Destination marketing is not an exact science. There is much we don’t understand, and so we need to be open-minded about alternative perspectives. As French philosopher Voltaire wrote in a letter to Frederick the Great in 1770: “Doubt is not a pleasant condition. But certainty is an absurd one” (Levene, 2013, p. 109). This is particularly so today, when the rise in influence of user-generated content (UGC) on social media is shaping a revolution in internet democracy, including fake news. We are on the cusp of a new digital age of destination marketing that will see the emergence of new models of DMO (de)structure and implementation of place promotion, and we must remain open to different ideas.

I make no claim to be an expert in destination marketing, but rather as someone offering a reasonably long-term experience-based perspective, and who appreciates both sides of the academic/practitioner divide. I am fortunate to have had hands-on experience of many of the political and marketing challenges (these two terms are inseparable in the context of DMOs) inherent in promoting destinations, at both a national tourism office (NTO) level, working for the predecessor of Tourism New Zealand (www.tourismnewzealand.com), and at a regional tourism organisation level, establishing and managing Tourism Rotorua (www.rotoruanz.com). As a result, I have been exposed to the political tensions, not only inside the DMO and between the DMO and stakeholders, but also in the NTO/RTO relationship. Little has been reported about these tensions in the academic literature from an emic (inside) perspective, mainly because of the difficulty in gaining unfettered access to the boardroom. For examples of emic insights on destination marketing see Ateljevic and Doorne (2000) and Pike, May and Bolton (2011). I believe strongly that a discussion about tourism industry politics warrants inclusion in the tourism/travel/hospitality curriculum, so that future graduates are forewarned. Also, I am hopeful the future will see more written about tourism politics in the academic literature.

Critical point

Why I cite my own research throughout the book

Throughout the book you will see references to my publications. This is because most of my research in the past 20 years has focused on the practical destination marketing issues presented in this book.

For free access to any of my journal articles related to destination marketing, in MS Word format, please use this link to QUT ePrints: https://eprints.qut.edu.au/view/person/Pike,_Steven.html

Case study

1.1 – The world’s first national tourism office (NTO) and destination management organisation, and the rise and fall and rise of a resort destination’s competitiveness

The New Zealand Department of Tourist and Health Resorts, established in February 1901, was the world’s first NTO (NZTPD, 1976). This was visionary thinking for a small, fledgling, colony at the bottom of the world. Note that neighbouring British colony Australia had only become an independent nation the month before. New Zealand was also the first country to introduce government tourist bureaux, which were a vertical integration of overseas sales offices, tour wholesaler, coach tour operator, retail travel agents and visitor information centres. The first domestic Government Tourist Bureau was opened in Rotorua in 1903, and the exterior shell of the original building still stands on the southern end of the city’s current visitor information centre. The Rotorua office was funded and operated by the NTO for almost 90 years. It was in this historic building that I began my career as a cadet with the NTO in 1978.

The New Zealand NTO’s first overseas sales mission was to the 1904 St Louis Exposition in the USA, and in 1906 the first overseas bureau was opened in Sydney, Australia. Honorary agents had been appointed in England, USA, Canada and South Africa (TNZ, 2001). It would be another 50 years before a national umbrella association of private sector tourism interests was formed in New Zealand (Staniford & Cheyne, 1994), now known as the Tourism Industry Aotearoa (www.tianz.org.nz).

Rotorua was New Zealand’s first tourism resort destination, rising to prominence on the back of the government’s vision for a South Pacific spa to rival those in Europe. The township of Rotorua was officially created in 1881, as part of the New Zealand parliament’s legislative Thermal Springs Districts Act, which made indigenous Maori land available for settlement by Europeans (Stafford, 1986). This was due to recognition by the government that the undeveloped natural geothermal features in the area were becoming an established part of the European gentry’s grand tour of the colonies (Savage, 1986); and were attracting increasing numbers of invalids from Auckland seeking the curative powers of the natural hot springs (Stafford, 1986). While entrepreneurs were drawn to this burgeoning visitor activity, it was the New Zealand government that would be responsible for developing, managing and promoting the new township as a resort area for the best part of a century.

Initially, the government commissioned the development of several bath houses and gardens in the 1880s (Stafford, 1986), and a railway...