Tourism and Hospitality Marketing: A Global Perspective

Citation

Spyriadis, T. (2010), "Tourism and Hospitality Marketing: A Global Perspective", International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, Vol. 22 No. 2, pp. 274-276. https://doi.org/10.1108/09596111011018232

Hudson's book Tourism and Hospitality Marketing: A Global Perspective provides the reader with useful insights into important themes and issues in contemporary tourism marketing. Written in simple language, the text defines key terms and engages in a comprehensive coverage of marketing principles. More than 70 international case studies and industry examples enrich the discussion, giving a true “global” perspective to the text, illustrating how marketing concepts and principles work in the diverse contexts of contemporary tourism and hospitality sectors.

Emphasis has been placed on pedagogical features throughout the book, a practice that makes the book very useful for undergraduate and HND level students. Every chapter begins with a practical application that stimulates the reader's interest and is used to enrich the discussions of the marketing concepts that follow. This can indeed encourage students to attain a more interdisciplinary perspective of tourism and hospitality marketing. Additionally, each chapter has stated objectives and a useful introduction explaining the content and scope of the discussion. A plethora of success stories (“Global Spotlights”) from the tourism and hospitality industry, as well as “Snapshots” (three per chapter) illustrate particular concepts or theoretical principles in shorter examples. This material can provoke deep thinking and stimulate discussion amongst students. The chapter summary, the list of key terms discussed, and the suggested discussion topics, questions and exercises at the end of each chapter can be used to challenge students and initiate debate in a classroom environment. Finally, in addition to the reference lists, web links to the case studies and the examples examined in the text are provided, which can be useful for students who wish to extend their knowledge on any particular practical example.

The book is coherent in structure. At the outset, The Global Tourism Marketing Environment is introduced, highlighting the key challenges of services marketing, identifying the key players of the global visitor economy, and describing the assortment of macro and micro‐environmental forces that shape the various industries of global tourism. The focus then moves onto Consumer Behaviour issues, explaining how contemporary tourism marketing is influenced by current trends in consumer behaviour. Building on this, Chapter 3 embarks on a discussion of Marketing Plans from the starting point of setting marketing goals and objectives, to the development and management of tactics and action plans for marketing strategy implementation and control. Next, an overview Marketing Research is provided, describing the stages involved in a marketing research process, as well as the main methodologies used in tourism and hospitality as a means to effective decision‐making.

Chapters 5 to 7 address marketing mix issues, explaining how the products of the tourism and hospitality sectors can be approached and analysed as the result of a synthesis of core, tangible, and augmented elements and characteristics. This analysis, together with introduction of the concepts of packaging and branding, lead to a discussion on new product development for global markets. Hudson successfully differentiates between strategic pricing and tactical pricing, with reference to specific characteristics of the tourism and hospitality contexts. Likewise, the author places an emphasis on the importance of alliances and franchises and the challenges during the implementation of distribution strategies, offering interesting insights of the complexity of the tourism system to the reader.

Chapters 8 and 9 explain the role of marketing communications for tourism and hospitality, followed by a discussion on internet marketing (Chapter 10). Initially the role and types of promotional tools used in these sectors are introduced. Then, the focus shifts onto the communication process and the importance of various integrated marketing communications (IMC) techniques, along with the impacts of the internet on communications strategies and marketing functions.

A useful addition in the book is the discussion on internal marketing and its role in the provision of service quality, explaining the link between service quality and customer satisfaction, and how relationship marketing strategies can generate consumer loyalty. The service recovery function is introduced as a significant relationship marketing process by which a company can respond and rectify a service delivery failure. Chapter 12 looks into the opportunities and challenges inherent in the marketing of destinations, and the role of destination marketing organisations (DMOs). Key issues in destination branding and promotion are discussed, and events and conferences, as well as all‐inclusive resorts, are presented as two particularly important sectors for the development of tourism at destinations.

The final section of the book introduces contemporary issues in tourism and hospitality marketing. The impact of contemporary demographic characteristics and behavioural shifts of societies around the globe on marketing practices of the future are discussed. A useful stance is taken here by the author, as the reader is urged to approach tourism as an experiential economy, where the customer is put at the heart of the organisation. Thus, to sustain a competitive advantage, tourism and hospitality organisations are advised to place increased attention on experiential marketing practices, on the principles of sustainable tourism, as well as on responsible environmental marketing. Moreover, the author advocates the increasing significance of sport and adventure tourism, which in addition to marketing tourism at times of crisis are suggested as key determinants of destination success in providing unique and memorable experiences to the visitor of the future.

Overall, the book provides a comprehensive coverage of key marketing principles applied to tourism and hospitality. On a rather negative note, the book largely does not engage in a thorough and in‐depth discussion of the issues and themes covered, which would limit its usefulness for postgraduate students. Moreover, there are numerous cases where no sources or references accompany the statistical data provided in the text. However, key strengths of the text are the use of clear language, and an extensive set of case studies that give the reader a very good taste of diverse marketing practices from all over the world. Thus, the book presents a useful addition to the reading list of undergraduate students and practitioners, as well as a useful source of case study examples for academics.