A few years ago I was lucky enough to be invited to the International Tourism Forum that is organized in Santa Cruz de la Sierra (Bolivia) to talk about the importance of tourism marketing, how to implement it in our country and especially highlight how to promote a tourist destination.
Many times we forget the importance of marketing (not advertising) and how this discipline, applied to tourism, can really bring many benefits.
Why do people go sightseeing?
Basically people do tourism for different reasons, although the most significant are:
- For fun / pleasure
- For business / work
- By family themes / visits
My favorite definition of tourism is the following:
Activities carried out by people during their travels and stays in places other than their usual environment, for a consecutive period of less than one year and more than one day, for leisure, business or other purposes.
And do not forget about the following. When a person does some kind of tourist activity, it involves different factors that influence their experience.
Factors such as:
- Feelings.
- Weather.
- Money.
- Effort.
- Expectations.
It is for that reason that it matters a lot what we say and how we say it. We must make people understand that they will really have a great experience with us, whatever their reason for traveling.
So with this little introduction, it's time to talk a little about tourism marketing and how to use it to our advantage by understanding the elements of it.
How to promote a tourist destination?
Define the target (Find the niche)
The first step to take advantage of the power of tourism marketing is to understand that we must clearly define the target or target audience. It is not simply a simple description, but rather to reach the essence of the audience or type of client we want to optimize the business. And use brochures as they can reach so many people without being ignored. brochure for cheap at 55printing.
What should be analyzed?
- Market: The location where our public is located.
- Public: The sector that we want to attack.
- Objective: A greater level of detail of that audience.
- Target: Exactly who is our client (even with demographic data)
This is a good way to really analyze who we want to reach with our tourism marketing actions.
How can we find that target audience?
There are many techniques, for example:
- Define our audience and analyze it by layers to reach the ideal audience.
- Do analysis and market studies.
- Perform cool hunting activities to detect certain trends.
- Analyze potential new business opportunities and unexploited niches.
The benefits of going to a tourist destination are the most important argument to make a sale and not just describe the place, what it will have and some details. The benefits are even many times those elements that the client can’t see with their own eyes and that also, are usually the reasons that convince him to do something.