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IMPACT OF THE PUBLIC SECTOR
In the light of public sector involvement with tourism, either directly through a ministry with responsibility for tourism and the NTO, or indirectly through, say, foreign policy, legal controls or the provision of infrastructure, the government has at its disposal a series of instruments that can be used to manager tourism flows to meet its policy objectives. The manner in which actions by governments influence tourism may be classified in two ways:
Demand and revenue management: and
Supply and cost management.
Demand and revenue management
There are primarily five policy instruments used by governments to manage demand:
Marketing and promotion;
Information provision and network development;
Pricing;
Controlling access, and
Security and safety.
Marketing and promotion
As has already been observed, marketing is the principal function of the NTO and its job is to create and protect the ‘brand image’ of the country/destination. The specific techniques are discussed in part 4 of this text, so it is sufficient here to point out that the key requirements for effective marketing are clear objectives, a thorough knowledge of markets and products, and the allocation of adequate resources. It would, however, be putting the ‘cart before the horse’ without the product, which is generally not under the control of the NTO, hence the importance of assigning the NTO some development powers. Typically, with many other calls on the govern-ment’s budget, finance officials are naturallyparsimonious with regard to expenditure on marketing because of difficulties in measuring effectiveness. As a rule, amounts spent by governments and other public organisations on destination promotion are only a fraction of what is spent in total by the private sector. One of the main reasons for this is that private enter-prises are copeting for market share at the destination, whereas governments are interested in expanding the total market to the destination.
The issue of marketing effectiveness is very pertinent to the earlier discussion on conflicting objectives for public sector managers. The latter normally have to satisfy a range of stakeholders, with the result that campaigns are often ‘me too’ watered down propositions that fail to fifferen-tiate from the rest of the ‘clutter’ in the marketplace and squuander resources. Attempts to break though thismay generate considerable controversy in the media that has political repercussions. Similarly, establishing destination identities is usually conceived as exercises in local pride, , which fail as “promotional hooks’ for attracting tourists and in creating a distinctive sense of place.
Information provision and network development
The ability of tourists to express their demands depens upon their awareness of the facilities available, particularly attractions, which are a key component of leisure tourism. For a number of years there has been government interest in creating computer-based national reservation systems. NTOs in Europe have already been operation “holiday Hotlines’ and out –of-hours telephone information. In many countries, local tourist information centres (TICs) offfer a booking service to personal callers, though still very much a manual system requiring TIC staff to telephone accommodation establishments to check availability. For example, in britain, the TIC network was used to develop the ‘book a bed Ahead’ scheme for the independent traveller touring difeerent parts of the country. However, as more and more bookings are being made electronically, what is ideal is a fully networked computerised reservation system (CRS). The key to penetrating the source markets from the destinations lies in using the CRS to link suitable accommodation to a range of ‘things to see and do’, so what is being sold is a complete holiday, not just accommodation. Although desirable, this does not necessarily mean complete pack-aging of other products: it is common just to use complementary suppliers in marketing and to couple this with the provision of good information on site. Others would go further and recom-mend a complete destination management system (DMS) that acts as a neutral facilitator and reservation system to the tourist industry, which would put small businesses on the same footing as the major corporate suppliers.
Implementation of a complete DMS via the NTO or regional tourist association is no easy task: in the past, proposals at the local level have foundered on the unwillingness of smaoll enterprises to give commission, to make booking allocations available, competitive jealousies concerning the equity of how bookings will be distributed by operating staff and arguments over classifica-tion and grading – an essential ingredient for the inclusion in such a scheme, as in all tourist bureau publications. Such experiences suggest that a complete DMS cannot be implemented or sustained without a great deal of public sector involvement and cooperation, particularly if the ETC’s ideal of Europe as a single destination is to be realised. As discussed further in Chapter 22, various systems are now available to enble potential visitors to assemble their own intineraies.The usual role of the NTO is to act as a facilitator to booking through povision of information on its web portal that gives links to agencies providing reservation services, so that end users and resellers can access the product of the destination. By this means NTOs enable end users and resellers to search, book and pay in a single application, as well as bulding networks to connect businesses and consumers to TICS. The reasons why people do not book online are to do with ease of booking, credit card secuity, trust in the supplier and lack of consistent information, though it is becoming clear that even the smallest accommodation provider is requiring a website and email facilities because the chances of potential guests walking in without proification are diminishing. In this respect, the adoption of ICT is crucial, for by lowering distribution costs for suppliers and reducing search cost for consumers, via the internet in particular, market poten-tial is widened. Experience has shown that the ICT phenomenon has radically increased the collective market share of niche products and flattened the sales distribution pattern, producing what has been termed by writers in this field ‘the long tail” that allows many more products to sustain themselves in the marketplace. Nor should travel and social media sites (referred to as eWOM sites ) such as Trip Advisor, facebook and twitter be ignored, as they are powerful distri-bution channels for highlighting positive and negative feedback. Placing weitten and video blogs are a wayof maximising online distribution. The modern tourist is able to use portable technologies such as a tablet or smartphone to view the destination, take advice from tripadvisor, and book online. Interactivity with the customer to find out what they want and say through website contacts, social media chat rooms, emails and mobile phone messaging offers a new dimension to the traditional promotional mix, pushing the latter down the scale of relevanc.
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