Hospitality and Tourism Marketing
Tourism is a highly-competitive industry with countries and localities vying for the same number of tourists. The country with a highly effective marketing campaign often gets the bulk of tourist arrivals despite the paucity of its natural beauties. One good example is Macau, which emphasizes its casinos as the main attraction. Another is great model is Hong Kong, which promotes its culture rather than anything else, because it does not have much of what a tourist or a traveller normally wants such as fine beaches, beautiful mountains, or historic monuments. Hong Kong is marketed entirely as a very cosmopolitan city with unique street cuisine. People go there to sample the food and experience life in this very dynamic city life and culture.
Tourism marketing is a complex endeavour, and tourism officials need to focus on particular markets to be able to capture a significant portion of these tourist dollars. Tourism has a lot of knock-on effects on the local economy such as higher hotel occupancy rates and additional purchases of food for visitors. It is a fact that many countries rely almost exclusively on tourism to survive and this dependence is often vulnerable to the health of the economy because travel is often considered non-essential expense. That said, governments should embark on a particular theme to entice tourists to their shores. Availability of comparison shopping such as hotel rates and foreign exchange rates can often help a potential visitor decide which country to go to. Of course, there are places where the attractions are really great such as historical countries like India and China that lure tourists all year round with or without any marketing.
