THR's opinion
2012 Tourism industry trends: tourism marketing and strategy
Eulogio Bordas, president of consulting firm THR, shares his vision around the trends that will shape the future of the tourism industry in the coming years regarding marketing and strategy, as part of the 12 tourism & travel professionals that gather Hosteltur.
Competitive keys, advantages or opportunities for 2012
Differentiation based on experiences and emotions
More than ever, offering differentiated and unique products. These products withstand much better the crisis. The key is to differentiate stimulating emotions. The client seeks life experiences and unique stories, not a bed or square meters.
Internet and eBusiness
Finally mature, the Internet surprised us even more with innovative business models, online marketing more personalized and the eBusiness launch in key areas of the company.
Target segments
Rethink your target segments. There are many opportunities for growth in Eastern Europe, Russia, Asia, etc. but also in our traditional markets.
Brands
Brands, brands, brands. Partnering with a strong brand. The customer values the security and the promise of a strong brand.
Improve of the operational efficiency
The most flexible and efficient companies will be the companies who leaves the crisis strengthened. 2012 will be a year of operational changes and optimization inside the companies.
4 threats to consider in 2012
A fall in prices
The risk of falling into a price war is real. The only alternative is differentiation. Use emotional and experiential elements to differentiate.
Fall of outbound tourism
The crisis will continue to affect many source markets, starting with Spain. It is essential to rethink the target markets, and within these target customers.
Not be easily accessible to the customer
Today, modern tourism is sold through online channels. In the near future, there will be 2 types of tourism companies: those that sell online and the others which will not exist.
Intermediation dependency
A big number of industry players continue depending completely on a few intermediaries (usually tour operators). In today's changeover times, this dependency represents a big risk.
7 marketing tools/technologies in 2012
Mobile technology
The mobile marketing opens new last minute sales opportunities, cross-selling, etc.
Online reputation
For those who still don't do it, actively manage your online reputation of your brand or company. In many cases it is a matter of life or death.
Communities and tribes
Manage your community of (potential) customers, but avoid the typical newsletters and give real value to its members related to their interests.
CRM and relationship marketing
CRM systems connected to the network that enables marketing relationship activities, creating and managing a customer long-term relationship.
Google+
It will be interesting to see how combine the "blogging" (extensions, rich text, etc.) With "tweeting" (links, sharing, etc). The result can be extraordinary !
Branded content
It will become a standard in the tourism sector.
Employee personal branding
Each employee is a personal brand. This will begin to be exploited online by tourism enterprises and destinations.
Ideas for future tourism
Improving competitiveness
The crisis forces many industry players to perform, finally, changes and modernize its business. I hope that the industry strengthened out this difficult year.
Marketing professionalization
Marketing is not advertising. The marketing is to create customer value, communicate it in a modern way and make this value easily affordable for the customer.
Less reactivity, more proactivity
We have seen for years how the industry passively waited to see the tourist arrive. Today we have to be proactive, we need to go and get the tourists in their country of origin and give them strong arguments.
The article was published in February's issue of Hosteltur.