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Different Examples of: Services: These can be airlines, hotels, car rentals, etc. Places: These are cities, states, regions or entire whole nation (Vatican City). Briar being the birth place of Lord Buddha has a special promotion to the domestic and international tourists. Briar Tourism promotions Properties: A lot of properties belong to the Royal families of Restaurants and Karakas are marketed to attract tourists and have developed part of these properties with leading Hotel industries as five or seven star hotels and they earn huge local and foreign currencies.
Events: The events like Gumbo Meal attract the highest number of tourists in one place in the whole world. Events like Pushcart festival also attracts tourists from domestic and international markets Gumbo Meal Pushcart Meal Experiences: Palace on Wheels in Restaurants, the Scuba diving experience in Leaseholder, Wild River rafting in the upper reaches of Ganges in Outranked; traditional Arrived assess in Kraal are marketed well to attract domestic and foreign tourists. Restaurants Tourism Development Corp..
The concept, initially launched in 1982, was derived from the Royal background of railway coaches which were used by Maharajah and Rulers of princely states of Restaurant, Gujarat, and Hydrated and also by the Viceroys of British India as their personal railway coaches. It was voted as the 4th luxurious train in the world in 2010. This has placed Restaurants in the forefront of Indian Tourism industry with maximum number of Foreign and Domestic tourists coming to this princely state.
Evolution of Tourism in India It was early 1950 s that the Government of India decided to promote tourism but marketing was not developed in India during that time. After 1950 there were some new offices opened overseas to promote tourism. But lack of professional excellence and promotional material made it harder to sell the “New Image” of India. In the ass we have seen offices opened in Japan but again lack of infrastructure, poor communication and information services together with poor financial condition and deteriorating law and order failed to get positive response in tourism.
By the beginning f ass, new idea generation and application of modern marketing principles started in India. But the competition in other countries made it difficult to project India as ‘Holiday Destination’. The beginning of ass marketers realized that in order to improve the holiday destination image innovative marketing needs are to be introduce. The product development required exploitation of our vast coastline with huge number of beautiful sandy beaches, wild life and adventure tourism in the Himalayas and Villages or Rural tourism. Aggressive Marketing strategies were required to tap the tremendous potential of India.
The starting of the Indian Institute of Tourism and Travel management helped develop professionally sound man power to feel the gaps in every sector of tourism. The beginning of the ass opened new areas for the development of tourism industries. The need of the infrastructure was felt and various projects like increasing the accommodation sector in government, private and public private venture, world class marketing communication information and promotion, improvement on law and order, relaxation of visa rules, betterment of fast and comfortable transportation were few of them.
The beginning of Tenth Five ear plan identified the following – Development and upgrading of railways, development of advanced communication and information technology, sophisticated print technology for advertisement and publicity, innovative sales promotion tools. These helped promote Indian Tourism both at domestic and global levels In the Eleventh Five year plan government focused on improving infrastructures like airports, roads, civics, amenities at the tourist destination, air connectivity and publicity. We saw a product mix of innovative tourism like rural, adventure, cultural, medical and costumers.
Cricket played very important role and by virtue of being the world cup champions and starting the PILL Series, saw a huge turnout of domestic and International tourist. But we did not see growth in this Industry as speculation would decorating crime scenes against woman in India. The recent rape episode in Delhi, Jasper and Madhya Pradesh has brought down the image of India amongst the domestic and International tourist. Why Tourism Marketing? The American Marketing Association defines marketing as the performance of Business Activities that direct the flow of goods and services from Producer to consumer or user.
The great marketing guru Philip Kettle says marketing is getting the right goods and services to the right people at the right places at right time and at right price with the right communication and promotions. Scorekeeper says marketing in tourism is to be understood as systematic and coordinated execution of business policy by tourist undertaking whether Private or State owned at local, regional, national and international levels to achieve the optimal satisfaction of the needs identifiable Consumer groups and in doing so achieve an appropriate return.
So taking the reference of Philip Jostler’s Marketing Management books with the Holistic Marketing Philosophy as a backdrop, we can identify a specific set of tasks that make up successful marketing management and leadership in Indian tourism Industry. The Objectives of Marketing tourism can be summarized as below: 1. To satisfy the unmet needs of customers – Customers satisfaction is a big aspect of marketing tourism. The expectations vary a lot from individual to individual and so understanding this and making a sound plan will be a key success factor in tourism industry. . Value for money – A lower traveling budget will increase the flow of tourist to different parts of India. To develop an effective operation where the cost is minimized, will make tourism marketing a successful venture in India. Marketing information plays an important in put to estimate cost. 3. To make a profitable business – Tourism is the largest service Industry in India. So we should take all necessary measures to make it profitable through operational management and it can maximize the profit in tourism.
Some of the states like Ago, Jam ; Kashmir, Restaurants and Kraal depend heavily on the tourist for their economic development. 4. Improve Brand image – safety, security together with comforts ND conveniences are the must do for this Industry. Since insecurity is detrimental to the image of a place where a tourist will visit, it is very important to conceptualize the concepts of marketing to portray of clear picture of quality of service to the tourist and potential tourist. 5.
Increase Foreign Exchange Earning – a good marketing mix together with promotion of good quality services will drive world tourists to frequently visit India and thereby increase our foreign exchange deposit. As we have seen in the beginning of this report, the foreign exchange earnings have increased ever the years and from 2010 to 2011 we have seen an increase of 16. 7% growth to USED 16. 56 Billion. There is a tremendous potential to increase our share of tourism Industry to the world tourism through proper marketing we can offer world class services at affordable prices.
In order to understand the market opportunities we need to have a robust MIS System. Indian tourism is mainly driven by Government sector and getting a robust information is a challenge in today’s context. However since we have somewhat a good system to track Foreign Tourist arrivals through our embarkation system, so a DOD data in terms of number of tourists, seasonality of their arrival, foreign exchange earnings, Countries from where they are arriving etc. Are available with Government agencies and they publish this report from time to time.
There are Government and Private run hotels which collect a huge data from domestic and foreign tourists but a lack of good feedback system in India makes it hard to get the exact needs and expectations of these tourists. India lacks trained manpower and if we increase the number of Institutes teaching Hospitality Management, it will address one of the most important gaps in tourism industry. In order to achieve this, there will be a huge increase in the employment sector in India catering to all kinds of people- skilled, semi-skilled and unskilled.
In order to collect a better market intelligence in tourism sector and then analyzing the potential of market opportunities, we recommend the following Train and motivate the Sales force to identify and report new developments – The various tour operators who run several hundreds of tourist programs can capture the voices of Customers when they sell these programs on-line or over phone. These data then analyzed will open up avenues to gain revenues through new programs.
Motivate intermediaries to pass along important intelligence – again all the distributors and retailers can be motivated as they are in constant touch with Customers to get helpful insights on programs and competition. Iii> Hiring External agencies – Mainly private firms hire specialists who can collect market intelligence from the field. They can be mystery shoppers or mystery patients (in case of healthcare tourism) to get information on Customer satisfaction in line with long wait times outside the Tourism offices or Hospitals / Diagnostic clinics.
In order to understand the market opportunities in tourism, we need to segment the arrest – create homogeneous groups so that the programs which will be developed will have similar acceptability. The communication strategies also can be directed to individual segments for a better effect. For example, we can segment the tourist arriving in Ago based on religion and offer separate packages for Christians, Hindus and Muslims during different seasons of the year; otherwise tourism in Ago is very seasonal.
Indian Tourism industry has to segment consumers into different groups to create better consumer strategies leading to better product development and immunization The definition of segmentation ” Market segmentation consists of taking the total heterogeneous market for a product and dividing it into several sub- markets or segments each of which tends to be homogeneous in all significant aspects”. Why we do market segmentation in Tourism? We do it because – To create the right marketing strategy – Segmentation is done to design the right market strategy.
Once you have a homogeneous group, it is easy to find the right behavioral characteristics of Tourists – No two tourists behave in the same way. So it is important for marketer to identify how they behave, what are their habits, what Indo of life style they prefer and then align strategies to make them more effective. Iii> To identify target customers/ tourists – Once we identify our target customers, then the marketer can develop programs to suite the satisfaction of these tourists and bring new customers into the program and thereby expanding the tourism market.
Positioning the strategy to win customers – Once the program addresses small segment of our Customers, the position becomes more apt for the group and then marketers command a better market share amongst them. This ensures leadership is maintained. When we talk about tourism marketing segmentation, our emphasis is on dividing the grouping the tourist market. The segmentation in tourism industry can be done in various ways. The most traditional ways of segmentation is based on geographic, demographic, cryptographic and socio economic.
Geography Based – Here cities, regions, countries are the main segments. Examples are Enchanting Ago, Tours of South India, and Mystic Restaurants. Demography Based – In this group we can consider age, gender, class, religion, occupation, etc. Out of these the most common way to segment tourism market is to do it by age. Age not only tells Marketers in terms of their interest, but also tells the eying capacity of an individual. These programs can be directed towards young adults for Adventure Tourism (Egg. Wild River Rafting in Ganges), young couples for romantic destinations (Egg.
Honeymoon Packages in Leaseholder) or towards Old aged people who prefers to have better quality travel, transport and hotels. Cryptographic Based – This segmentation is done based on life style, personality, motives, product and knowledge. Some examples are Yoga & Arrived tours of India, Golf tours of India. Socio Economic Based – This is segmented based on economic status, development of area, etc. Some examples are Helicopter Tourism, Rural Bamboo Craft Tourism. Tourism marketing can also have the following segments: Holiday Based – This segmentation is based on the length of holidays taken by tourists.
It is generally influenced by school and college going children and sometimes after year ending activities in offices. There are several sub segments in this like Mass tourism – where people prefer to travel in big groups; Popular Tourism – where the group is more homogeneous and they are generally a small group of relatives or friends; the other group is Individual Holiday market where people travel individually with direct family members or friends and they are very independent in choosing itineraries, hotels, etc.
Some examples are Summer Holidays in Outranked, Christmas Holidays in Ago. Purposed based – The segmentation is driven by the purpose of their travel. They can be Business Travelers, Cultural Tourism travelers or travelers with common interest segments like sports, religion, etc. Some examples are Char Dam Hyatt, Delhi by night for business travelers. There is a very interesting article I read in the internet which is developed by an I-J based market research and data modeling Company in response to the very successful Visit Britain” ‘s segmentation be very simplistic and stereotypical.
Moreover they are very predictive. So this sophisticated and highly discriminating value based system provided more detailed and refined tourist information and gave a better understanding of different types of visitors in every part of I-J. The ARK Leisure psychometric segmentation consists of 3 main elements * Aspiration * Life factors and choice drivers * Tourism purchase scenarios The following example of their I-J based leisure and tourism market was segmented based on 8 value based segments as shown in the fugue.
Why is this model very popular in today’s context because it could predict how values and beliefs are tied with the Tourist’s need and these needs give rise to different behaviors and the destinations they choose. Http://www. Insights. Org. UK/articles. Asps? Title=Segmenting 20thotourismrkmarkete 6: Ark Leisure Segment Descriptors Cosmopolitans I * Strong, active, confident * Style and brand important, but as an expression of their self-made identity * High spenders especially on innovation and technology * Looking for new challenges, new experiences * Globetrotters I
Discoverers I * Independent in mind and action * Little influenced by style or brand but interested in new options * Buy on function and value to them * Looking for new and educational experiences I TraditTraditionalelf-reliant, internally referenced * Slow to adopt new options * Strong orientation towards traditional values * Value individual attention and service I FunctiFunctionalelf-reliant * Price-driven * Value function over style * Traditional values, but interested in new experiences, not risk averse I HabituHabitualargely inactive, low spending group * Very traditional, strongly resistant to change * Risk averse * Value elaxatelatione and quiet I Followers I * Strongly influenced by what others will think * Don’t want to be seen as old fashioned * Less active * Slow to adopt * Avoid risk I High Street I * Mainstream early adopters * Followers of high street fashion * Care what others think * Happy to buy packaged options I Style Hounds I *Young Free Single’, impulsive * Fashion counts * Brand counts * Looking for fun with friends * Most not seriously sporty I Source: ArkenfRockford) Tourism Marketing Positioning One big element in marketing is positioning. In tourism marketing if you can do a good positioning statement, you have a good marketing plan. It is utmost important that the professionals who plan for positioning the tourism product need to have a deep knowledge of the places for which they are developing the market. The tourism products need to be unique, emotive and should carry a strong brand so that good promotions can be created to position them.
The key elements of this positioning statement are * Attribute of Business/ Destination – it should be honest and true to your business Emotive Expression – It should bring an emotional feeling and it should be motivating * Branding – Projection of a positive brand image of the place help position the ourismoursct well in customer’s mind. KeralaKraalsm’s success in the promotion of their state as “offers nature on a platter” to both domestic and international tourists is an illustration of the fact that how places are marketed. The success of this branding lies in the ability to market the natural beauty of the land. KeralaKraalsm is the first tourist board of India to register with the Trademark Registry its brand, logo and baseline “god’s Own Country’ to protect brand equity legally. Competition Tourism is the largest service industry in many countries like India.
It not only brings a huge income including foreign exchange, it also creates a huge opportunity for employment. Though we have such rich culture and heritage, even then India does not come under the first 20 Top destinations in the World. In Marketing we need to take care of the following aspects in order to raise the competitiveness in the Tourism Sector. Branding: Specific strategies and activities need to be incorporated in promoting India and their states as a top destination within India and in the world. There has to be Joint initiatives between Government and Private to start these ollegeallegesch a way that the colleges will be developed by private entrepreneur and the recognition will be given by Government Bodies.
We have seen very successful initiatives in brand promotion line “Incredible India” or “AtithiTahitiBDevon”Behavether Countries and locally promotions like “KeralaKraal’s Own Country’ was a major success. We would encourage all State Governments and Central Government to broaden its base to cover each and every state with some kind branding inside and outside India Price: There is a need to do a competitive benchmarking with Top 10 Asian Countries in terms of price and facilities offered. Based on each Country a SWOT aSOOTsis needs to be prepared and then the programs need to be designed keeping in mind seasonality and destinations. Market Share: We have very good data on tourists arriving in India from foreign Countries. But it is hard to track the domestic tourists.
There has to be sustained market research and analysis and corrective action taken to track market growth, Customer Satisfaction survey, etc. Tourism Micro Environment – Porters five force analysis of Indian Tourism These five forces determine competitive intensity and therefore determine the attractive criteria of the market. If the solution is unattractive, the combination of these forces will drive down the profitability of this Industry. Tourism Macro Environment – PEST analysis of Indian Tourism The PEST analysis describes a framework of macro-environmental factors used in strategic management. It should be continuous and should give feedback to all respects of planning. It is very important to understand this analysis before beginning the marketing process.
Number of Tour Operators: In India by the end of December 2011, there are only 110 authorized and approved tour operators who are registered with the Ministry of Tourism. Out of these Delhi, MaharaMaharajah’saryanHarlanitutes almost 31% of them. There are again four to five times the un-regUNtered Tour operators in India and yet the supply and demand gap is huge. Development of professionals in Tourism Industry: There is a huge gap in the availability of trained manpower in Tourism Industry in India, so Government of India has taken a lot of initiates including opening of premier Institutes in Travel & Tourism Management, Hotel Management and Food Craft Industries.
The private sector also needs to come forward with this education institutes so that the gap in this industry is filled up quickly. There needs to be a good promotion to make people aware the respect and pay which is offered in this job. Moving forward in 12th Five Year Plan: Looking at all these and the fact that most of the infrastructure plans and implementation are with the State Governments, so the Central Budget should aim of Tourism, Government of India, the 12th Five Year Plan (2012-2017) is aimed owardsawardsollowing: 1 . Tourism Product / Infrastructure Development 2. Human Resource Development 3. Promotion and Marketing 4. Market Research including 20 years Perspective Plan 5. ComputComputerizingnformation technology.