Description
Social media has forever changed the way that people plan trips, take trips, and document a trip after their return. This change presents new opportunities for cities and towns to grow the local economy through tourism.
Whether tourists come downtown to see historic sites and cultural venues, to attend business meetings, or to celebrate the holidays, the downtown area has a unique opportunity to capture much needed tourism dollars for local businesses.
In this second edition of Tourism Marketing for Cities and Towns, author Bonita Kolb encourages readers to view tourism development as a community-based effort which fosters individual entrepreneurship, strengthens creative and cultural organizations, and enhances overall economic development.
She outlines a process for involving local stakeholder groups, including business owners, nonprofit organizations, and community members in determining the unique tourism attractions that a community has to offer.
Then, she turns her attention to researching current and potential visitors and how to reach them with social media and content marketing.
This thoroughly researched book presents important ideas and techniques in a very readable format. Equally important, it puts the complex job of tourism marketing within reach for any community.
Table of Contents
- Developing a Marketing Plan for Tourism to Cities and Towns
- Marketing and tourism
- Desire for authentic cultural experiences
- Social media and tourism
- Developing a marketing plan
- Building Community Support for Tourism Development
- Development of marketing
- Economic development and tourism
- Stakeholder analysis
- Getting started
- Analyzing the City or Town as a Tourism Product
- Analyzing the city for tourism potential
- Analysis of tourism products and services
- Determining the core tourism product
- Analyzing the supporting and augmented tourism products
- Analyzing the Internal and External Environment
- Rationale for environmental scanning
- Process of obtaining information
- Scanning the economic and technological environments
- Scanning the demographic and socio-cultural environments
- Determining Marketing Strategy Using SWOT Analysis
- Product analysis using SWOT
- SWOT and external opportunities and internal strengths
- Choosing a strategic focus
- The marketing plan goals and objectives
- Researching Current and Potential Visitors
- Understanding research basics
- Research approaches and methods
- Additional research methods
- Completing the research process
- Motivating, Segmenting and Targeting Visitors
- Visitor motivation
- Purchase decision process
- Desire for creative tourism
- Segmenting and targeting visitors
- Developing an Authentic Brand Image
- Branding tourism products
- Brand identity and community involvement
- Brand attributes
- Brand awareness and social media
- Using Social Media for Content Marketing
- Forms of social media
- Communicating online with visitors
- Social media co-creation of the tourism experience
- Social media and the desire for customizable itineraries
- Creating Paid, Owned and Earned Media
- Paid versus owned media
- Traditional paid media of advertising, sales incentives, and public relations
- Blogging and reviews as promotional tools
- Earned media and content marketing
- Promoting to Tour Groups and Meeting Planners
- Destination marketing organizations and tourism promotion
- Personally selling the destination
- Tourism trade show promotion
- Tourism partnerships
- Implementing and Assessing the Tourism Marketing Plan
- The marketing budget
- Developing timelines
- Assessing social media impact
- Assessing community support
About the Author
Bonita. M. Kolb is an Associate Professor of Business at Lycoming College. She has written several books covering nontraditional uses of marketing, city and “place” marketing, and cultural marketing.