Marketing for Hospitality & Tourism - Main Topics of Study

Introduction: Marketing for Hospitality and Tourism

  • Customer orientation
  • What is hospitality and tourism marketing?
  • Marketing in the hospitality industry
  • Undesirable customers
  • Marketing management
  • Marketing management philosophies
  • Marketing’s future
  • The internet changes how we market hospitality products
  • Great leaders

Service Characteristics of Hospitality and Tourism Marketing

  • The service culture
  • Characteristics of service marketing
  • Management strategies for service businesses
  • Ritz-Carlton: taking care of those who take care of customers
  • Overview of service characteristics: The Servuction Model

The Role of Marketing in Strategic Planning

  • Nature of high-performance businesses
  • Corporate strategic planning
  • A strategic look at Starbucks coffee
  • Business strategy planning
  • Unique challenges of the hotel industry

The Marketing Environment

  • The company’s micro-environment
  • The company’s macro-environment
  • Managing in uncertain times
  • Popcorn’s cultural trends
  • Linked environmental factors
  • Responding to the marketing environment

Marketing Information Systems and Marketing Research

  • The marketing information system
  • A “questionable” questionnaire
  • Research problem areas
  • The internet: a great source of marketing information
  • Marketing research in small business
  • Marketing research in smaller organisations

Consumer Markets and Consumer Buying Behaviour

  • A model of consumer behaviour
  • Personal characteristics affecting consumer behaviour
  • Senior consumers
  • The San Diego Padres Baseball Club
  • The buyer decision process
  • Unique aspects of hospitality and travel consumers

Organisational Behaviour of Group Market

  • The organisational buying process
  • Participants in the organisational buying process
  • Major influences on organisational buyers
  • Organisational buying decisions
  • Group business markets
  • Dealing with meeting planners
  • The corporate account and corporate travel manager

Market Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning

  • Markets
  • Market segmentation
  • Jollibee: a regional fast food chain
  • Targeting families by targeting kids
  • Market targeting
  • “Elite-napping” the business traveller
  • Market positioning
  • Airline positioning: Southwest Airlines

Designing and Managing Products

  • What is a product?
  • Product levels
  • Augmented product
  • Brand decisions
  • New product development
  • The National Food Laboratory helps restaurants develop new products and improve existing products
  • Restaurants and hotels develop new product ideas
  • Product development through acquisition
  • Product life-cycle strategies

Internal Marketing

  • Internal marketing
  • When employee communications go against customer expectations
  • The internal marketing process
  • Nonroutine transactions

Building Customer Loyalty Through Quality

  • Defining customer value and satisfaction
  • Tracking customer satisfaction
  • Relationship marketing
  • Retaining customers
  • The link between marketing and quality
  • What is quality?
  • Benefits of service quality
  • Developing a service quality program
  • The five-gap model of service quality
  • Forecasting market demand

Pricing Products: Pricing Considerations, Approaches and Strategy

  • Price
  • Factors to consider when setting prices
  • Aspen skiing company knows out-of-state visitors are less price sensitive
  • General pricing approaches
  • Pricing strategies
  • Segmented pricing: the right product to the right customer at the right time for the right price
  • Price fixing
  • Other pricing considerations
  • Price changes
  • The internet makes it easy for customers to find price information

Distribution Channels

  • Nature and importance of distribution systems
  • Nature of distribution channels
  • Marketing intermediaries
  • Top ten ideas for working with travel agents
  • Channel behaviour and the organisation
  • The Hilton Model
  • Restaurant franchising
  • Selecting channel members
  • Responsibilities of channel members and suppliers
  • Business location

Promoting Products: Communication and Promotion Policy and Advertising

  • The communication process
  • Thank you – a great personal communication
  • Establishing the total marketing communications budget
  • Managing and coordinating integrated marketing communications
  • Southwest Airlines
  • Manage the integrated marketing communication process
  • Advertising
  • How does an advertising agency work?
  • Major decisions in advertising
  • Association advertising

Promoting Products: Public Relations and Sales Promotion

  • Public relations
  • Taco bell provided example of creative publicity
  • Major activities of PR departments
  • Publicity
  • Singapore Suntec Centre
  • The public relations process
  • Major tools in marketing PR
  • Public relations opportunities for the hospitality industry
  • Crisis management
  • Sales promotion
  • Local store marketing

Electronic Marketing: Internet Marketing, Database Marketing and Direct Marketing

  • Internet marketing
  • Using the web to market tourism destinations
  • Web site development
  • Business-to-business e-commerce
  • Developing a marketing database system
  • Using your database for customer research: defining the power of your loyal customers
  • Gazelle Systems brings database marketing to restaurants
  • Manhattan East Suite Hotels gives customers what they want before they ask
  • Direct marketing

Professional Sales

  • Management of professional sales
  • Nature of hospitality sales
  • Sales force objectives
  • Sales force structure and size
  • Organising the sales department
  • Relationship marketing and strategic alliances
  • Recruiting and training a professional sales force
  • Managing the sales force

Destination Marketing

  • The globalization of the tourist industry
  • Importance of tourism to a destination’s economy
  • Stop the brutal marketing
  • Tourism strategies and investments
  • Gambling on Central City
  • Segmenting and monitoring the tourist market
  • Maryland Office of Tourism development case study
  • Communicating with the tourist market
  • Organising and managing tourism marketing
  • National tourism organisations: how they work

Next Year’s Marketing Plan

  • Purpose of a marketing plan
  • Section I: executive summary
  • Section II: corporate connection
  • Section III: environmental analysis and forecasting
  • Section IV: segmentation and targeting
  • Section V: next year’s objectives and quotas
  • Section VI: action plans: strategies and tactics
  • Pricing strategy
  • Section VII: resources needed to support strategies and meet objectives
  • Section VIII: marketing control
  • Section IX: presenting and selling the plan
  • Section X: preparing for the future

 

Recommended Reading

Main Text:

Marketing for Hospitality & Tourism (3rd edition) – P. Cotler, J. Bowen & J. Makens (Prentice Hall)