Internet Tourism Marketing: Potential and Constraints

 Hotel Online: Ideas and Trends. July 2000. Liu, Zhenhua.

(Fourth International Conference "Tourism in Southeast Asia & Indo-China:  Development, Marketing and Sustainability June 24-26, 2000 ") 

Part 2: THE CHARACTERISTICS OF TOURISM MARKETING

Summary:

Travel and tourism products are ideal for marketing on the Internet. This is because tourism is an information-intensive industry and the Internet is the most effective and efficient means in information exchange worldwide. The Net can greatly facilitate the promotion and distribution of tourist products and potentially enable tourism destinations and enterprises to compete on a level playing field.

Tourism Is an Information-Intensive Industry

In few other areas of activity are the generation, gathering, processing, application and communication of information as important for day-to-day operations as they are for the travel and tourism  industry"  (Poon 1993:154).  The perishability of tourism products and the often erratic tourist demand make the task of balancing tourism supply and demand far more significant than any other sector. That is probably why tourism became one of the first industries to widely apply IT and conduct electronic commerce from the 1960s in the form of computer(ised) reservation systems (CRSs) and then global distribution Systems (GDSs).

This idea of perishability is extremely relevant for tourism. Once the opportunity to provide the service has been lost it can never be regained. As for the idea of an information intensive industry, this appears to be correct.

Tourist Products and Services Are Difficult to Evaluate
As a service industry, most tourist products are intangible services, they are experienced and cannot be touched, tasted, smelt or seen and therefore
difficult for tourists to grasp and evaluate. Furthermore, the spatial fixity of tourist attractions and amenities means that a tourist cannot really assess their quality until he arrives at the destination.

This is often the case with services, and as such this issue must be focused on specifically. In regards to the internet, the use of pictures, real time cams, movie and other such multimedia tools seek to decrease this uncertainty.

With the Internet, virtually unlimited amount of information can be stored at a web site and an unlimited number of users can retrieve it at any time from anywhere in the world. The Web can not only provide more information but also provide it from a much wider range of sources; while in the past, tourists are almost exclusively dependent upon representations and descriptions by the travel trade. The Web can also deliver the information in a greater variety of formats, from text to photos, graphs, audio and video clips, whereas in the past, tourists primarily relied on the printed brochures as the limited copies of videos of a limited number of tourism destinations or holidays were only available to the major travel agents.

This does demonstrate a major advantage of the internet, however the issue that the company can never be sure of what the consumer sees is a major negative. This often results from users viewing the web pages through different web browsers, where as when you print a brochure, the company knows for sure what and how the customer will see the layout and information.

As for the unlimited amount of information, this is a major weakness of the internet, there is often such many pages and different web sites that potential consumers can easily get lost and then give up.

The location factor is one that is a major benefit of the internet, however consideration must be undertaken of the different languages and cultures that are unanimous with different people in the world.

Tourism Distribution Has Physically Nothing but Travel Tickets to Deliver

'With the increasing popularity of electronic-ticketing (c-ticketing) or ticketless-travel, especially among airlines, online tourism distribution over the Web may one day have no physical goods (not even a ticket) to deliver at all.

While this may provide major advantages to companies and some consumers, there are always going to be consumers that want the tickets as a form of souvenir or a physical guarantee that everything is booked and prepared correctly.

After the tourist completed his journey or holiday, he takes nothing home but experiences (though often together with some photos and souvenirs). In the whole process, from the booking, through the out journey to the return journey, the only things being transported are travel tickets and the tourist himself. This unique characteristic offers tourism a great advantage in Internet marketing as the only cost of online sale will be the transaction processing expense plus a little postage cost; in contrast, for manufactured goods, the delivery cost is often substantial.

This is one definite advantage of the tourism industry.

The Tourism Destination Product Is Fragmented

As a place product, tourism includes all the elements a destination has to offer to tourists, including the social, cultural and physical environments as well the "touristic" components of tourism supply such as attractions, transport and lodging facilities, and other travel related services

Difficulties in tourism destination marketing are attributable primarily to two factors. First, tourism is fragmented in that while the tourist looks at a holiday as a complete "experience", it is sold in the market place "in bits" as beds, meals, tours, seats, etc. by a plethora of independent suppliers that operate independently of one another.

A number of issues are apparent from this point. Firstly if a set of companies wish to prevent this they could combine and create a strategic alliance in order to provide top quality service that targets similar target markets. Secondly, factors such as links from your web site to another companies could mean that any dissatisfaction is easily transferred onto your company.

Second, no one agency controls or can deliver content about a destination's tourism product as the marketing of a tourism destination is shared by another plethora of organisations such as tourist information centres, regional tourism boards, national  tourism organisations and national tourist offices overseas located in main generating markets.

This is true and no doubt creates a lot of frustration for people looking for information. It is for this reason that countries must be sure to have one overall tourist site for all the suppliers (www.tiscover.com). This also means that the market dollars spent advertising the web site can be used much more efficiently.

The Vast Majority of Tourism Enterprises Are Small In Size

There are a few large multinational airlines, tour operators, hotel chains and theme parks; on the other, there are millions of small and often family owned businesses, especially in the travel retailing, tour guiding, hotel and catering sectors.

This is even more prevalent in the adventure tourism industry where virtually all the business are small often family owned businesses.

The Internet has opened the door for small businesses with little capital to reach a worldwide market. Open access results in lower entry barriers so that virtually anyone can both access and provide content to the Internet.

Nevertheless, it must be noted that although it costs little to achieve a web exposure, the development of a fully functional marketing and sales site and especially the promotion of the site to increase visitor numbers require huge investment. Therefore, the Internet provides a level playing field for all sizes of companies only at the point of entry - that is, to establish a web presence.

* All text in red indicates quotes taken from the full text article.