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Introduction
Ocean separates the world to several lands, among which there’re two lands I’m most interested – Britain and China. On that island in North Atlantic Ocean, people drink Earl Grey with milk or lemon, they have sandwich as lunch almost everyday, and are crazy about football. On this grand land in North Pacific Ocean, we drink pure green tea, we always have a stir-fry dish and rice as lunch (which is though to be dinner by people from that island), while we love football game too.
Needless to say, there are various interesting things to compare from many areas. In this article, I’d like to have a look of tourism marketing, which is also an exciting topic to talk. For example, in the UK, marketing is more scientific by following a logical research – analysis process; on contrast, in China, marketing is like art, a marketing campaign can become a shot just from a creative idea. Having gained knowledge of marketing management from UK education, my understanding of marketing is guided by a western style, which somewhat distinguishes that in China. Thus, I’d like to discuss some opinions from my own observation, covering three aspects: cognition of marketing, segmentation, and marketing campaign practice that to illustrate a completed marketing process in the UK. Meanwhile, some basic concepts and models are explained briefly.
Marketing, Nutrition or Medicine?
Initially, let’s start with the definition. According to the American Marketing Association, marketing is "the process of planning and executing the conception, pricing, promotion, and distribution of ideas, goods, and services to create exchanges that satisfy individual and organizational objectives." Besides, marketing mix 4P, 4C are also well known. Regarding tourism marketing is to promote destination, attraction, accommodation and other tourism products, it relatively differs due to the nature of tourism. Tourism product is experience, which intangible and ----. Tourism marketing acknowledges the interdisciplinary nature of tourism, focusing on the functions and processes of the tourist system in order to create, communicate and deliver value to customers (tourists, host communities and other firms) and for managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the organisation and its stakeholders, emphasising sustainability.
In the UK, marketing is recognized as a significant factor in tourism management. However, in China, it is treated much less important. As pointed by marketing guru Philips Kolter in 2004, “Chinese tourism industry is not getting interested in marketing management yet”. Talks with some Chinese tourism professors prove it too. It is found marketing is not regarded considered as a necessity of tourism management. There’re still many attraction managers believe that they do not need marketing, even though sometimes they cannot find the reason of poor sales. Marketing is always considered as medicine to save attraction from crisis.
Stated by Migalic (2000), the competitive model of attraction is made up from management and marketing. In other word, the competitiveness of attraction not only depends on hardware development, but also depends on marketing plan. As far as I concerned, marketing to tourism attraction is supposed to be vitamin to human body. It requires by a balanced and healthy organisation. Consequently, local tourism principal is recommended to improve their cognition of marketing and paying more attention to get on track.
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