Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
41
Futurecasting the tourism
marketplace
Luiz Moutinho, Ronnie Ballantyne and Shirley Rate
Introduction
The tourism industry is by nature a dynamic one, but recent years have witnessed turbulent and
chaotic change from dramatic demographic shifts, climate change, technological revolutions,
two major terrorist incidents and a global economic crisis, all of which have momentous
implications for tourist trade. Yet tourism remains one of the most valuable economic sectors
in the world and the European Travel Commission (2012) indicates that even with a backdrop
of on-going government austerity limiting and slowing economic growth, tourism demand
in Europe has not signifi cantly dropped. Holidays remain an important aspect of annual
expenditure - an emotional and protected purchase. Thus, tourism marketers face unique
opportunities in a global context that is stifl ing other industries. But with opportunities come
considerable challenges. This environment of unprecedented worldwide fl ux and uncertainty
makes for extremely diffi cult and risky business decision making. Analyzing future trends or
'futurecasting' in the tourism sector has become a critical success factor for marketing managers.
The aim of this chapter is to apply futurecasting to a tourism marketing context. The
purpose is to highlight the key emerging trends in the tourism environment with implications
for future tourist motivations and behaviours and thus the effective marketing of tourism
products and services. Futurecasting involves the identifi cation not only of megatrends in the
operating environment but also those 'weak signals' in environmental scanning terms that are
likely to dictate the nature of the tourist consumer and dominate the make-up of competitive
arenas in the tourism sector of the future. These are the developments which if on the 'tourism
radar' will allow marketers both an intelligence and time-advantage over their competitors. It is
these developments which will drive change in the traditional approaches to tourism marketing.
New paradigms of marketing thought must emerge as the implications of future trends produce
novel and unparalleled consumer contexts.
As the tourism environment shifts and evolves at an increasingly rapid rate, the challenges for
marketers become particularly steep - markets emerge and disappear, new technologies shape
the way people seek and share information, consumers become more inquisitive, sophisticated,
changeable and demanding, core values which infl uence motivations, interests, activities have
been reinvented as generations evolve. Thus, the traditional concept of meeting consumer needs
