Tourism Marketing
We spend our lives seeing so much of it, television, radio, web sites, etc. We are surrounded by it. Marketing is like the word "ecology" – a nice word, but most people have never seen an "ecology". So let’s use a working definition of "tourism marketing":
Tourism Marketing is “the process of planning and executing the conception, pricing, promotion, and distribution of tourism ideas, goods, and services to create exchanges that will satisfy individual and organisational objectives”.
In simple terms, heritage tourism marketing is "successfully" communicating with and convincing potential visitors that you have something that they need or will benefit from, and that you can provide a service or fill that need better than anyone else.
Without doubt heritage tourism marketing is the most critical aspects of any heritage destination or interpretive attraction operation.
Heritage tourism marketing brings in visitors – and gets them to come back for return visits.
Successful heritage tourism marketing efforts = staying in business!
One of the most surprising things, given how critical a "professional" understanding of basic heritage tourism marketing principals are for any heritage tourism operation, is the lack of understanding through out the heritage tourism industry of what marketing actually is, and "how to do it"!
We often work with clients that have spent thousands or even tens of thousands of “the hard earned” in the planning, design, production and distribution of heritage tourism marketing brochures, websites, and advertising campaigns and so on, and yet they have no proof that they actually work!
How do you know that the time, effort and money you spent tourism marketing has given you a return on your investment? We often ask clients if their heritage tourism marketing efforts has actually brought in enough new visitors to cover their heritage tourism marketing costs....
....All too often the answer is
“errrr, I don’t know!”The fact is that too many heritage tourism businesses don’t have a clue if their heritage tourism marketing works and thats why at Heritage Destination Consulting we integrate tracking or evaluation process into every campaign we do.
Contact us to see how we can help you get the best out of your heritage tourism marketing strategies!