Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Consumer
protection
Company ethos
Standards of
practice
Technological
Marketing
Social
Political
Economic
Fig 5.2 - Factors inl uencing marketing in travel and tourism
marketing does not take place in a completely free and
unregulated business environment - if it did, customers
would have no protection and companies could use
all sorts of unwelcome techniques to market their
products. There are many factors that have an effect
on how companies carry out their marketing activities,
as shown in Figure 5.2 and described in the following
sections of this unit.
of these communication methods are looked at in greater
detail in section 2 of this unit when we investigate the
marketing mix in travel and tourism in greater depth.
E-marketing
E-marketing (where e stands for electronic) includes
internet advertising, text messaging by companies
and e-mail marketing. E-marketing is the fastest-
growing part of travel and tourism marketing, allowing
organisations to target their customers very effectively
with appropriate information and sales messages.
Advertising on the internet is relatively cheap and is
an excellent way of getting sales messages to specifi c
customer types, using services like Google Adwords.
The growth of internet advertising is having a negative
impact on more traditional types of advertising, such as
TV and press adverts, which are losing market share.
Company ethos
All marketing activity must conform to acceptable
ethical and moral standards, for example by not
showing prejudice against religious, ethnic or other
sections of the population and by not being overtly
sexual or distasteful in content. Like all companies,
travel and tourism fi rms are expected to show social
responsibility and to be ethical in all their marketing
activities. A good example of this are companies that
adopt the principles of 'green tourism', sometimes
called 'sustainable tourism' or 'responsible tourism' -
they go out of their way to promote holidays that do
not harm the environment or the local people in the
holiday destinations they feature.
Factors inl uencing marketing in
travel and tourism
Travel and tourism is a fast-moving sector of the
economy that is affected by many social, economic,
technological and political factors. Travel and tourism
