“TOURISM TIDBITS”

Posted on May 22, 2025

“TOURISM TIDBITS”

FROM

TOURISM & MORE, INC.

The goal of “Tourism Tidbits” is to provide travel professionals with a monthly, easy-to-read overview of creative ideas. With proper referencing, we invite you to quote or reproduce “Tourism Tidbits” and to pass it along to friends.

“Tourism Tidbits” is published monthly in English. Spanish, and Portuguese. The Spanish translation is from Ferran Anguera of Barcelona, Spain. The Portuguese translation is by Lillian Donati Godinho of Lisbon, Portugal.

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Tourism & More’s

Tourism Tidbits

TOURISM & MORE’S “TOURISM TIDBITS”

February 2025

Marketing in Good and Challenging Times

Tourism marketing is never easy, especially when we consider that many people view much of the leisure travel and tourism industry as a non-tangible or non-essential product. Furthermore, tourism is influenced by many factors outside of the industry’s control. Travelers may change plans or destinations, or even cancel trips, due to economic, health, political or social factors.

Tourism marketers must often try to convince an ever more skeptical public that vacations are more than mere superficial wants; and that they serve a real and needed purpose. Over the last decade tourism marketers have struggled with the question such as if a vacation is a want or a need. They also struggled with defining what is tourism marketing. For example, in 2013 The Board of Directors of the American Marketing Association approved the following: Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large. (Approved July 2013). The definition created new challenges. For example, how are tourism marketers to define value? Tourism marketers must not only prove to their potential clients that their product has value, but in a composite industry, such as tourism, there is no one single product. The tourism experience begins even before the moment the client (tourist, visitor) leaves home and continues until past the time that the client has returned home. Along the way the tourism marketer must deal with a variety of products and services that range from the air/bus/train terminal experience to the actual transportation experience or in the case of a private vehicle, the roadway experience. There is also the dining experience, the lodging experience, and the quality of the visitors’ activities. To make matters even more complicated tourism customers are young and old, speak different languages and come with a wide range of expectations, wants and criteria.

Marketing is never easy and requires both basic and sophisticated strategies. To help you develop some of these strategies Tourism Tidbits offers the following advice.

-Develop a realistic budget and learn to live within the budget. One of the great mistakes in marketing is spending more than you take in. Be frugal, but not stingy, in how you spend your marketing money. Ask yourself what is a realistic expected rate of return on the money that you spend and are your marketing techniques appropriate for the targeted social group?

-Know with which demographic groups you are most likely to succeed. Different groups of visitors want different experiences and different take-aways. It is essential that your marketing matches your demographics. Older visitors want a very different experience than younger visitors. Demographics should be broken down by age, gender and in today’s word gender-orientation, cultural desires and needs, distance to be traveled, and economic groups. No tourism destination can be all things to all people. Success is defined by matching your tourism offering to the correct demographic group.

-Know what you are marketing. It is amazing how many organizations are confused as to what their base business is. For example, is an airline marketing transportation, travel, or a destination? In in the leisure tourism industry, we often state that we are marketing relaxation, but in reality what we are really marketing Is post vacation memories. That means that marketing must include not only what the visitor receives during the experience but also what the visitor takes away from the experience.

-Do not depend on any one form of marketing: Different demographic groups require different marketing strategies. For example, younger generations are likely to respond differently to high tech or certain types of social media than older generations. Social media is a great tool for some but not all demographic groups. Furthermore, social media have many forms and these forms experience their own market lifecycle. For example, some forms of social media that were in vogue with the under 25 crowd only a few years ago, are now barely considered relevant by members of that generation today. Using social media as a media tool means being on top of the current trends and knowing which group not only reads social media, but also perhaps more importantly permits social media to influence its decision-making and believes social media.

-Do not forget about the value of word-of-mouth. Word-of-mouth is an effective tool especially when one is marketing to a more educated and upscale market. Although it is slower in reaching vast quantities of potential clients, as a tool it can be highly effective. Word-of-mouth marketing is not simply a haphazard phenomenon. In fact, it is estimated that many products and services are purchased because someone has told them about a particular brand. The best word-of-mouth advertising is based on a clear plan. Here are some word-of-mouth tips to consider and remember word-of-mouth requires out of the box thinking and lots of creativity:

It is free and therefore we can see word-of-mouth marketing as a great leveler especially for small busineses that do not have a large advertising budget
To get your narrative into the public realm make sure that you live your story. For example, if one of the things that you want people to talk about is your excellent customer service, then be sure to provide that level of service. The marketing goal is to transform your service or product into a brand or narrative and then by your actions have it become the narrative.
Think customer loyalty! Give your customers the sense that they are part of you; that the narrative belongs as much to them as it does to you. You can accomplish this goal by giving people the sense that they are “insiders” and part of your business family. To do this you have to do more than merely survey your customers. Make sure that you take their opinions seriously If customers want to see a particular change, then try and implement that change as soon as possible.
Meet with some of your customers. Invite them to face-to-face conversations with your senior management; let them know that they are on the same team as you.
Listen more and talk less. The more you listen the more others will talk about you. Getting customer feedback in an unobtrusive and polite way shows that you care and the hospitality industry is nothing without caring.

-Compete against yourself and not against your colleagues. Good marketing is not negative marketing. Using negative marketing may work in political campaigns, but rarely if ever works in tourism. The best marketing is when you are able to demonstrate to the public that your great offering has now become even better. That means you have to know what your offerings are and what “better” means to your public.

-You have to be open to get business. Many stores especially in smaller communities have irregular hours. Good marketing makes no sense if the customer cannot enter your establishment. The same is true of large travel or tourism companies that put people on hold for long periods of time or force them to “climb” a telephone tree. Never have the people who take calls give the impression that it is only a job. If your customers cannot reach you, then your marketing efforts cannot succeed.

– Appearences and the way your personnel act matter. How you interact with the or customer basis mattersß. That means that personnel must look and speak in a professional way. No customer judges your tourism business on what you say your represent but rather what the customer observes about you. Tourism is all about good service and the best marketing comes about when we do what we say we do, and allow people to live our collective dreams.

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The Art of the Assessment Study
Assessment studies are to tourism what medical check-ups are to people. Every locale needs to have a full assessment study to determine both tourism strengths and weaknesses, to build a better industry and to avoid future problems. Please contact Tourism & More for details.
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TOURISM AND MORE’S WIDE RANGE OF SPEECHES AND TRAINING SEMINARS

For a complete listing of topics and information, please check our web page http://www.tourismandmore.com/contact or e-mail us at ptarlow@tourismandmore.com

Please contact us at ptarlow@tourismandmore.com for more information regarding costs and available dates.

All seminars and speeches can be presented in English, Portuguese, or Spanish.

1) Tourism challenges in a post-Covid world.

2) Political advocacy through tourism: Using tourism to change the perception of your locale, business or nation

3) New forms of tourism: from agro-tourism to dark tourism

4) Tourism and Heath: Surviving the Next Pandemic.

5) Surviving man-made and natural disasters

6) Successful and failed tourism marketing strategies.

7) Avoiding tourism crises by using good risk management techniques

8) Dealing with over- and under- tourism, how to match the number of visitors to your locale’s capabilities

9) Tourism Confronts Terrorism: What You Need to Know to Maintain a Viable Industry in the Face of Terrorism

10) Training Your Police: Tourism Oriented Policing (TOPPs), how it works and why it is essential for a viable tourism industry.

11) Generational Marketing: How to market tourism to diverse age groups

12) Medical tourism: its advantages and the challenges

13) Something from Nothing: The Art of Creating New Attractions.

14) Dealing with the Media: Transforming the Media into your friend

15) Selling to the Latin American Tourism Market: No, they are not all the same!

16) Selling to the US Market: One country and lots of niche groups

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Books on Tourism in English

In alphabetical order by title. Most of these books are available at Amazon.com or from the publisher

(see below for Spanish and Portuguese language books)

1) A Supply Chain Management Guide to Business by Betty Kildow; BettyKildow@comcast.net

2) Beach Safety and the Law, Edited by Jeff Wilks published by Queensland (Australia) Law Society

3) Challenges to US and Mexican Police and Tourism Stability: Peter E. Tarlow, Emerald Publishing. Available at the Emerald Book store or at Amazon https://books.emeraldinsight.com/book/detail/challenges-to-us-and-mexican-police-and-tourism-stability/?k=9781803824062

4) Event Risk Management and Safety (ISBN 0-471-40168-4) by Peter E. Tarlow, published by John Wiley & Sons. Presenting theory and practical applications. To purchase this book, visit http://www.wiley.com or http://www.amazon.com. If you would like Dr. Tarlow to speak or train people in this area, please contact him at ptarlow@tourismandmore.com

5) Leisure Travel: A Marketing Handbook, by Stanley Plog, Pearson Prentice-Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ, 2004. Available through the website of Pearson Prentice-Hall for $25.

6) Marketing for Hospitality and Tourism (7th edition) by Philip T. Kotler (Author), John T. Bowen (Author), James Makens Ph.D. (Author), Seyhmus Baloglu (Author). Available on Amazon.

7) Media Strategies for Marketing Places in Crisis, by Eli Avraham and Eran Ketter Published by Elsevier

8) Personal Reconstruction, by Peter E. Tarlow, Tom Marrs, Nathaniel Tarlow & Eduardo Leite. How to prevent or recover from a personal crisis. Available at Amazon.

9) Personal Resilience, by Peter E. Tarlow and Séverine Obertelli, Quest Publishing, Miami, Florida

10) Restoring Tourism Destinations in Crisis by Dr. David Beirman: Published by Allen & Unwin (Australia & SE Asia) and CABI Publishing North America/ Europe 2003. For more information contact david.beirman@uts.edu.au

or go to: https://au.sagepub.com/en-gb/oce/tourism-crises-and-destination-recovery/book256475

11) Sports Travel Security by Peter E. Tarlow, published by Elsevier

12) Terrorism and the Economy, edited by Karin W. Glaser, For more information please go to: http://www.elevenpub.com/law/catalogus/terrorism-and-the-economy-1#

13) The Economics of Tourism Destinations, by Norbert Vanhove, Published by Elsevier

14) The Ethics of Terrorism: Innovative Approaches from an International Perspective. Eds Thomas Albert: Publisher: Charles C. Thomas, Springfield, Il; USA.

15) The Sage Encyclopedia of Travel and Tourism; Three Volume Series, Published by Sage

16) Tourism Crises and Destination Recovery, by David Beirman, Published by Sage Australia. For more information contact David Beirman at David.Beirman@uts.edu.au

17) The Tourism Gaze 3.0 by John Urry and Jonas Larsen. An all-new updated version of a great classic. Published by Sage.

18) Tourism: Principles and Practices, by John Fletcher, Alan Fyall, David Gilbert, and Stephen Wanhill. Published by Pearson

19) Tourism and Mobility, Burns, P. and Novelli M. eds. (Wallingford: CABI)

20) Tourism Development: Growth, Myths and Inequalities, Burns, P. and Novelli, M. eds. (2008). (Wallingford: CABI)

21) Tourism Safety and the Security for the Caribbean, Drs. Andrew Spencer and Peter E. Tarlow, Published by Emerald

22) Tourism in Turbulent Times. Toward Safe Experiences for Visitors. Edited by Jeff Wilks, Donna Pendergast, and Peter Leggart. Published by Elsevier.

22) Tourism Management: Analysis, Behavior and Strategy, edited by Woodside and Martin, published by Cabi, London, England

23) Tourism-Oriented Policing and Protective Services, Peter E. Tarlow, published by IGI

24) Tourism Security: Strategies for Effectively Managing Travel Risk and Safety by Peter E. Tarlow, Elsevier, ISBN: 978-0-12-411570-5

25) Tourism Security & Safety, from Theory to Practice. Edited by Yoel Mansfeld and Abraham Pizam, published by Elsevier.

26) The 2020 Election: A Survivor’s Guide; Peter E. Tarlow and Steve Vincent, Doppler Printing

27) Twenty Years of Tourism Tidbits: by Dr. Peter E. Tarlow and Dr. Tom Marrs. Available now on Kindle and Amazon. http://www.amazon.com/TWENTY-YEARS-TOURISM-TIDBITS-ebook/dp/B004Q9TIWW/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=books&qid=1299276788&sr=1-2

28) 24 Sustainable Cultural Tourism: Small-Scale Solutions by Susan Guyette, Ph.D. ISBN: 978-0-9858788-0-1, On Amazon.com

29) 25 Marketing Strategies to Build Your Outdoor Recreation Business by Evanne Schmarder and Peter Pelland. Published by Train Rec Productions. Please contact E. Schmarder at evanne@roadabode.com to purchase this book or find it on Amazon

Libros en español/ Livros em Português

1. Abordagem Multidisciplinar dos Cruzeiros Turísticos (A Multi-disciplinary Approach to the Study of Cruises) por Dr. Peter E. Tarlow, Ericka Amorim, Cyntia Andrade, Nina Cardona Valéria Mariotti. Por favor contato Ericka Amorim: erickaaa@msn.com.

2) Antropologia e Turismo. Teorias, métodos e praxis, por Xerardo Pereiro e Filipa Fernande. Para comprarlo dirijase a

<http://www.pasosonline.org/es/colecciones/pasos-edita/151-numero-20-antropologia-e-turismo?

3) Desarrollo del turismo en América Latina: fases, enfoques e internacionalización por Wallingre, N. Disponible en http://eyapublicaciones.web.unq.edu.ar

4) Geografía y Turismo. Aspectos territoriales del manejo y gestión del turismo. Editorial Félix Varela. La Habana, 2013, 295 páginas. Autor: Eros Salinas Chávez, contacto: esalinas@ftur.uh.cu

5) Inversión Hotelera, por Alfredo Ascanio. http://etrillas.com.mx/trillas/busqueda/php

6). La Nueva Fiebre del Oro. Las otras ciudades del turismo en el Caribe (Varadero, Bavaro-Punta Cana). Para obter uma copiea deste livro, visite: GGU-AGE: http://www.uib.es/ggu/publicaciones.html OCDS UIB:http://cooperacio.uib.cat/digitalAssets/221/221991_Las-otras-ciudades-del-turismo-en-El-Caribe.pdf

7) ¿Ocio o….Neg-Ocio? por Abelardo Pagani

8) Principios, Organización, y práctica de turismo, Ramón Martín, Editorial Felix Valela, Havana, Cuba

9) Productos Turísticos, Medina, Santqamariana, y Salinas, Escuela de Altos Estudios de Hoteleria y Turismo, La Habana, Cuba

10) Turismo en el Caribe, por “Jesús Manuel González Pérez y otros. Contacto Dr. Gonzalez por información adicional]: jesus.gonzalez@uib.es

11) Turismo Sustentable, por Alfredo Ascanio y Marcus Vinicius. http://etrillas.com.mx/trillas/busqueda/php

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About the Author:
Peter E. Tarlow, Ph.D. is the President of Tourism & More, Inc., a founder of the Texas chapter of TTRA, and a popular author and speaker on tourism. Tarlow is a specialist in the areas of the sociology of tourism, economic development, tourism safety and security. Tarlow speaks at governors’ and state conferences on tourism and conducts seminars throughout the world and for numerous agencies and universities.

If you know of anyone else who might enjoy “Tourism Tidbits,” please send his/her email address to ptarlow@tourismandmore.com, Please let us know of any topic that you would like to see covered by “Tourism Tidbits.” We invite others to submit articles for consideration for publication.

You are welcome to reproduce “Tourism Tidbits” or any part of “Tourism Tidbits” with proper referencing. We hope that you will see “Tourism Tidbits” as a place where tourism, visitor, and travel professionals exchange ideas and information. “Tourism Tidbits” does not offer or provide specific legal or financial advice. Our goal is to provide a “review” for industry personnel and discuss provocative issues. We remind all readers that every specific business decision should be made only after you have done the proper research. The authors accept no responsibility for any loss due to any information published in “Tourism Tidbits.”

All articles sent to “Tourism Tidbits” and accepted for publication are owned by “Tourism Tidbits” and may be subjected to editorial review and rewriting (with permission of the author). All questions about “Tourism Tidbits”, suggestions, or cancellations should be addressed to Dr. Peter E. Tarlow at ptarlow@tourismandmore.com.