All You Need to Know About the Concept of Tourism Marketing

Tourism marketing is a broad term since there’s no one-size-fits-all. Even so, in this information age, no one can deny the importance of technology and marketing practices that are ever-changing. If you run a travel business and aren’t sure how to leverage marketing, get all the tips in this blog.

Tourism marketing

People’s travel choices and destinations have changed drastically. The marketing techniques for tourism products and services must also change to match those demands. 

In simpler words, tourism marketing employs promotional strategies and techniques that help sell relevant products and services, such as destinations, hotels, transport services, equipment, tools, and more.

The concept of tourism marketing

Tourism directly affects the gross domestic product (GDP) of many countries. This is one of the many reasons tourism marketing is crucial.

It’s a smart move to focus on marketing several hotspot-tourist places in your country/state. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t promote locations less visited. If you have a strategy to showcase them differently, go for it! You may get a monopoly over other travel agents. You never know if such destinations could become the next big thing on the global map.

Each travel and tourism business owner must know how to highlight their saleable points. It helps target potential clients best suited to what you are offering.

Overall, strategic planning and branding are keys to successful tourism marketing.

Benefits of tourism marketing for travel business owners

Travel is one of the world’s largest industries, expected to keep growing in the coming years. Since there’s demand and expected growth, naturally, the industry is highly competitive. 

As a travel business owner, you must research, develop strategies, and formulate innovative ways to stand out from the rest.

Various tourism marketing tools can help promote your travel company as the best option for travel enthusiasts.

It’s also about identifying your unique selling point (USP) and promoting it to the masses. But the job doesn’t end there. You need to present it in a way that captures the potential audience’s attention. 

Therefore, as a part of your marketing efforts, you must keep up with the latest trends. You should also employ various strategies to test what works best for you.

Types of tourism marketing

As mentioned, tourism marketing involves trying a variety of methods and techniques. We’ve listed here a few for you to consider.

1. LOCATION MARKETING

This type of marketing focuses on bringing people’s attention to a specific location.

For instance, when anyone says Europe, most people usually think of countries like Greece, Spain, Italy, Austria, or the UK. Why? Brilliant marketing, perhaps? Everyone wishes to travel to these destinations at least once.

Destination marketing is a common practice among top-notch travel and tourism companies worldwide. They highlight an entire location as a travel destination rather than singling out one accommodation or attraction.

This marketing strategy has made some locations so popular that they get added by default to almost every itinerary. 

That is why several travel marketing agencies already do and can use this type of marketing to remind people about these destinations.

2. ACTIVITY MARKETING

People often associate specific activities with locations. For instance, France is famous for vineyards, Switzerland for skiing, Alaska for its Northern Lights, and Yellowstone National Park for hiking and camping.

This type of marketing capitalizes on a particular activity related to a specific place, which is why it’s called activity marketing.

While traveling to new destinations, people want to indulge in activities like adventure sports, art galleries, food tours, rejuvenation, and more.

Activity marketing is a profitable way to attract people wanting to experience such activities while exploring new destinations.

3. CORPORATE MARKETING

Some travelers travel for pleasure, and a few for reasons other than tourism. The category of corporate workers travels to different destinations for business purposes.

Corporate marketing has emerged as another branch of travel marketing. As a travel agent, you can highlight places where business events regularly take place. You can make touristy locations more popular and profit off the large number of corporates gathering at these spots.

Methods of tourism marketing

Most agents in the tourism industry use modern marketing methods and multiple channels to attract more clients. 

Here’s a list of some marketing channels to include in your plan if you’ve not already.

1. DIGITAL MARKETING

It’s a must to focus on digital marketing in the Age of Information, where people search everything on the web that affects their decision-making. Know that most people use their mobile devices to search for travel information on social media or websites. 

So ensure your digital properties, such as the website or app, are compatible with mobile devices.

2. SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING

An extension of digital marketing, social media allows you to promote your brand, services, and products on a larger scale. Social media marketing for travel businesses is a blessing because it offers a space to connect with potential clients and raise brand awareness.

You get all the scope to post a variety of travel content, which apparently is quite popular amongst social media users. Besides, you can post user-generated content on your social media to make your brand stand out and seem more credible.

Social media is the best platform to promote your USP and monetize it. People are always on social media, especially the younger generation, searching for travel destinations that fit their budgets and expectations. 

You can target prospects by running social media ads based on the type of travel services you offer. Get leads from the ads so you can turn them into clients before your competitors.

Several social media marketing tools can help upgrade your tourism marketing efforts if you aren’t sure how to use social media like a pro. One such tool is Practina. Once you automated social media with it, you don’t have to worry about creating and publishing content manually. Practina takes care of it all. This social media scheduler also helps you run ads in under five minutes and get instant lead notifications.

3. EMAIL MARKETING

This marketing channel serves several purposes. You can send exclusive content to your subscribers/email list, updating them about the latest offers, loyalty programs, travel news, developments, and other similar information. 

Emails are a direct form of digital marketing, so you can create a buzz around your services or products before they hit the market officially. 

This exclusivity can make your clients feel special, who may quickly get interested in your offers. In a way, email marketing helps build a trusting relationship with your clients.

Strategies and marketing tips to try

Tourism marketing trends and developments keep changing, so keeping up with them is critical to stay relevant as a travel brand. However, you’ll also have to keep adopting the latest techniques and practices to promote your services and products. That’s if you want existing clients to keep coming back while getting new ones alongside.

1. Local is crucial – The COVID-19 pandemic showed the world its limitations but also emphasized the value of local. Besides, the travel industry suffered a great deal of loss since international travel was reasonably affected. After everything eased a little, people started showing interest in traveling locally. So while marketing, you can use tactics that appeal to local clients. Think of promoting one or two-day trips. Most people can afford to enjoy traveling over the weekend!

2. The remote working category – The remote work culture picked up during the pandemic, and if you think it’s not closely related to tourism marketing, think again. Lockdown pushed the workforce to look for alternate places to serve as their temporary offices. A specific niche of remote workers turned to hotels or hideaways to work with a fresh perspective. You can promote custom offers by targeting such clients since the demand for work-friendly spaces will likely grow.

3. Virtual reality tours are game-changers – There are so many exciting tourism technologies available today, and virtual reality is one of them. VR allows people to experience a flight, hotel, restaurant, or attraction from anywhere in the world. VR tours are easily accessible on mobile devices and computers. They make it easy for people to decide better and quickly whether they want to experience the same in real life as they did digitally.

4. Personalization matters – This strategy is always about creating more relevant customer offerings.  Social media, emails, and other marketing tools can help deliver personalized offers to target audiences or clients to come across as more appealing.

The Final Words

Clients don’t pay just for the services or products. They are in it for the experience. Ensure your content marketing ignites the passion in people to travel with your help.

Hopefully, the marketing tips shared above can help you transform your travel business and gain success on different levels.