Basic Features of Tourism Services Marketing

- During times of peak demand, additional services should be added to give waiting customers more options.

- In addition, travel companies apply demand management methods, such as using advance reservation systems.

* Supply-related strategies:

To serve customers during peak hours or tourist seasons, travel management companies can mobilize temporary or part-time employees. Encourage customers to participate in the service provision process, or build uniform programs to provide services. In addition, travel management companies need to implement measures to increase existing capacity, such as expanding types of entertainment...

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In addition to the four characteristics above, tourism services also have two other characteristics, which are heterogeneity and nonownership.

Heterogeneity

Tourism service products are made up of tangible and intangible products. Tangible products are tourism facilities and intangible products are service processes, service attitudes, etc. of service providers. Therefore, services are heterogeneous. With this characteristic, it is often difficult to meet service output standards. Each case of service consumption requires the implementation of both the provider and the consumer.

Nonownership

Travel services have no ownership. Indeed, with services such as hotels, airlines… when we finish using them, we cannot take our seats on the plane or in the hotel as our own, but only buy the right to use those things.

In Marketing, services are not only for customers but also for the company's profit. This requires service providers to always remember to work to the best of their ability, and when providing products, they must try to do the service 10 times better than the tangible product. Only then can they make up for any shortcomings of the tangible product, increase the overall quality of the tourism product, and create unique features that customers will feel to distinguish their products from those of their competitors.

2.2. Basic characteristics of tourism service marketing

Due to the nature of services, service marketing, specifically tourism service marketing, becomes much more complicated than commodity marketing. Tourism service marketing solves many different problems, including the relationship between tourists' awareness and their awareness of tourism products and services, supply and demand of tourism services, methods of transferring tourism services... with the following basic characteristics:

Firstly, the object of tourism service marketing is tourism service products, with their own specific characteristics and properties. From there, marketing strategies also need to change to suit the marketing object to be effective. For example, due to the intangibility of tourism services, the task of tourism service marketing is to make the service "tangible" to customers, creating trust for customers when consuming the service. Or because of the heterogeneity of tourism products, tourism companies need to specialize the service process, professionalize the service staff, etc.

Second, regarding the pricing of tourism services: tangible products are accurately estimated in terms of costs, but tourism services when priced externally are based on

Costs also take into account consumer perceptions. Therefore, it is difficult to accurately and reasonably determine the planning, pricing, cost and selling price in tourism services marketing. This requires flexible pricing of tourism services to adapt to the specific conditions of each customer or customer group.

Third, about tourism service distribution: the tourism industry does not have a physical distribution system like other physical production industries, so it cannot transport tourism products and services to different places. Therefore, tourism service distribution requires many intermediaries and brokers (agents, representative offices, tourism management organizations, etc.).

Fourth, about Marketing Mix (Marketing-mix): Marketing of tourism services inherits Marketing-mix of tangible products including 4P: product policy, price policy, distribution policy, promotion and support policy, and expands policies: people, facilities, service process and partnership; forming 8P in Marketing of tourism services. In other words, Marketing of tourism products and services requires the help and coordination of many departments and agencies in advertising and information. In addition, Marketing strategies of tourism services need to be carried out before the peak period of tourism (ie before the tourist season), only then will advertising and promotion be highly effective.

3. The role of tourism service marketing in developing and promoting tourism image

For a manufacturing enterprise, Marketing has the effect of connecting the enterprise's production activities with the market, which means ensuring that the enterprise's business activities are market-oriented and know how to take advantage of the market.

The needs and desires of customers are the most solid foundation for all business decisions. Similarly, to be successful in business, to develop the image of tourism of their unit, in addition to factors of capital, technology, tourism service businesses must clearly understand the market, needs, and desires of tourists, the art of behavior in tourism business... Tourism service marketing is an effective method for businesses to succeed and at the same time develop their tourism services well or build their tourism image for customers, based on the following main roles:

Firstly, tourism marketing directs, guides and coordinates the business activities of tourism enterprises. Departments such as product development and marketing cannot be separated from each other. They are interchangeable like your right and left hands. If they work separately, they will become clumsy, awkward and ineffective. But if they work together, the two hands can create wonderful things. Various studies have also shown that in many companies, the transmission and coordination of R&D and marketing activities has promoted the process of promoting the image and positioning of tourism products and services. At the same time, these studies also show that the integration of marketing with other functional groups such as research and development has become one of the most important factors affecting the success of promoting the image of a tourism service.

Second, tourism service marketing provides a solid scientific and practical basis for tourism enterprises' business decision making. Through market research, marketing clearly identifies who to provide services to, how to provide services, and methods of promotion and image promotion.

Thanks to that, the services of tourism businesses can satisfy the needs of tourists, attracting more tourists.

Third, tourists have increasingly high demands for services, service quality, service prices, etc. Through the market research function, Marketing makes the services of tourism businesses always adapt to the needs of the market and service consumers.

Fourth, tourism services marketing promotes research, development and innovation of services to adapt to market fluctuations. Marketing today plays a central role in translating customer information into new services and then positioning these services in the market. New services are the response of companies to changing customer preferences and are also the driving force of competition. As customer needs change, companies must innovate to satisfy and respond to those changes. Marketing’s task is to identify customer needs, so Marketing must play a role in establishing and leading the innovation process.

Fifth, through the establishment of tourism service marketing strategies, Marketing helps tourism businesses have the right development direction and at the same time carry out business activities that bring higher results.

Sixth, tourism marketing helps increase the competitiveness of tourism services. Today, customers are more powerful than ever. They can completely control where, when and how services are consumed. This also means that customers will have more choices for themselves. They will be less loyal to one brand and prefer to find out information from their own research, friends and experts about the tourism services they want to consume. This change has led to innovation in business and marketing activities: changes in strategy implementation

Marketing mix, in the way of conveying messages, in the way of approaching customers. Reality shows that any business with the right Marketing strategy is grasping the opportunity to approach customers better.

With the above roles, Tourism Service Marketing has become a synthesis of increasingly complete tourism service advertising methods to be used in investing and improving the tourism market, thereby contributing to building and strengthening the image of tourist areas for domestic and international markets.

II . Business process of tourism service marketing

1. Research on tourism service marketing environment

The tourism service marketing environment is the synthesis of all factors, internal and external forces of the enterprise that have positive or negative impacts on the activities or decisions of the tourism service marketing department in the enterprise, on the ability to establish or maintain relationships between the enterprise and customers . 10. Changes in the tourism service marketing environment have a profound and strong impact on businesses operating in this service, including both good and bad impacts. This means that the tourism service marketing environment creates both opportunities, advantages and pressures, threats for all businesses. The fundamental thing is that tourism service managers must use marketing research tools, marketing systems to monitor, grasp and sensitively handle marketing decisions to adapt.

respond to changes in the environment.

According to Philip Kolter, the tourism service marketing environment is a collection of elements of the micro-marketing and macro-marketing environments.

1.1. Micro Marketing Environment

The micro-marketing environment includes factors that are closely related to the business and that affect the business's ability to serve customers (businesses, suppliers, marketing intermediaries, customers, competitors, etc.) 11. All of these factors make up the micro-marketing environment according to table 1.1.

Table 1.1. Factors of the Micro Marketing Environment

Business

People

supply

Competitor

compete

Marketing intermediaries

Client

Direct public

Source: Basic Marketing Textbook 12 When studying the micro-environment, we need to consider the functions and activities of all departments in the business, the capacity and development trends of suppliers, and study the characteristics of Marketing intermediaries - they are individuals and organizations that help travel companies find customers and provide services, including travel agents, tour operators.

11 Philip Kotler, Phan Thang translated (1994), Basic Marketing, Statistical Publishing House, Page 47

large-scale travel agencies, hotel representatives, passenger transportation companies, marketing service providers and financial intermediaries.

Firstly, it is the factors and forces within the enterprise. Marketing decisions must be based on the tasks, specific strategic goals in tourism development of the entire enterprise. In addition, the Marketing department must work closely with other functional departments such as finance, human resources, tourism market development, etc.

Second, marketing intermediaries or business organizations and individuals help companies organize the consumption of their services and goods to end consumers. In the tourism service sector, marketing intermediaries include travel companies that help find customers, travel agents, tour operators, etc. In addition, agencies such as advertising, radio, tour consulting, etc. contribute to promoting tourism products to the right audience, market and time.

Third, suppliers are individual businesses that ensure the supply of necessary elements for the completion of tourism products and services such as: passenger transport companies, cruise lines, restaurants, hotels, booking services, etc.

Fourth, every business sector has competitors. Competition between domestic, regional and international tourism markets.

Fifth, the customer factor is the deciding factor for the success or failure of a business. Because customers create the market, the size of customers creates the size of the market. Along with that, businesses must also pay attention to factors such as spending, tourist structure, etc.

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