Institute of Commercial Management | Qualification Subject

Marketing For Hospitality & Tourism

ICM Professional Diploma Unit

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

Example Candidate Response Booklet

Example Candidate Response (ECR) Booklets are a source of crucial information for Centres and Candidates as they use real candidate responses. We ask Senior Examiners to comment on five or more responses in terms of why the mark was awarded with commentary about how to improve the answer (if necessary).

Recommended Reading

Main Text:

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

Indicative Text:

Alternative Text and Further Reading: