Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
often the decisive factor for the success of brands, products and services. It is in this sense that
services must be designed based on a clear understanding of what and how customers value from
their journey through the service experience, the touchpoints. This can only be achieved through
the adoption of design principles, which Stickdorn defi nes as an ecosystem. He argues that
service design is an iterative process, which must involve customers at each stage. He outlines the
main principles of design thinking and shows how these can be applied in tourism. Chapter 25
centres on tourism distribution contexts and future strategic issues. Whilst technological change
has been a driver behind many of the issues covered in the dynamic context of tourism marketing
outlined thus far in the topic, nowhere has that been more apparent than in the context of
distribution and the mediation of travel services. Spencer and Buhalis describe the context
of those debates, the history of information and communication technology (ICT) adoption and
diffusion and acceptance, relating them to two key issues for the future, the digital divide and the
imperative for leadership in driving forward technology adoption across the industry.
The following two chapters deal with pricing and revenue functions. Firstly Fernandez-
Young argues that despite its positioning as an aspect of the marketing mix, it is essential that
marketing recognizes the strategic role that price setting plays in the organizational strategy.
Price setting is fundamental to tourism marketing and decision making, because it is often
only by the price that consumers can judge the quality of the product. Fernandez-Young
outlines the different mechanisms that can be used and relates these approaches to price dis-
crimination methods. Helpfully, this chapter discusses pricing decisions in the context of a
number of different sector examples. The following chapter ( Chapter 27 ) takes up the issue of
revenue management (RM) as a strategic tool. McMahon-Beattie and Yeoman provide an over-
view of development and use of RM in tourism. They relate RM to economic theory and to
perceived value and highlight the challenges and potential confl icts between RM and customer
relationship management (CRM) before discussing the implications of dynamic pricing and
ethical issues relating to trust and fairness in the context of RM strategies.
CRM has often been cited as a key driver behind tourism marketing practice. Customer
loyalty and retention is crucial to success of tourism businesses and tourism is often constructed
as being a 'people' industry, based on face-to-face interaction. Yet technological change and
competitive pressures have challenged businesses to focus on processes that increase effi ciencies.
Some of those effi ciency gains have been brought about by the adoption of self-service
technologies (SSTs). Tourists can now book, pay for and use a service without any contact with
personnel. Often, tourists actually desire this minimal level of interaction. So, a challenge is to
build long lasting relationships whilst at the same time encouraging them to be autonomous.
Chapter 28 provides a critical analysis of the use of SSTs in tourism and how they can be used
alongside CRM strategies. Stockdale develops and presents a framework to show how
relationships and brand loyalty can be established in an SST environment and links these to
outcomes for customers and fi rms. Finally in this section, McCabe and Foster ( Chapter 29 )
review the literature on marketing communications in tourism. They show how tourism
marketing research has approached communications issues in a rather limited and atomistic
sense. The chapter outlines communications theory as a context for discussing the need for a
more integrated approach to research on understanding the effects of marketing promotions and
campaigns across different media channels.
Destination marketing
Part 7 moves on to focus on destination marketing and branding issues. This section begins with
Morgan and Pritchard, who set the context for this section with a review of destination branding
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