Tourism and marketing - how similar are they?

The competitive world of tourism  is segmented into two types:

1) INBOUND

2) OUTBOUND

So too is marketing! Why then is there such a clear distinction in the tourism sector, yet across marketing professionals in Australia inbound and outbound marketing suffer from such confusion?

Probably becuase tourism involves the mass movement of people, so it has physically tangible properties whereas marketing is the mass movement of information and largely out of sight.

Yes, I am referring to online marketing - the advertising of now and tomorrow carried by the power of Google and the inherent control it gives in the buying processes to the customer.

Yet its perceived invisibility - perticularly for inbound marketing - qualifies it as the sleeping giant of lead generation.

Just this week the marketing manager of a very large hotel chain confided in me, explaining the frustration she feels because her campaign is not generating any new action for the sales team.

My answer was: "Do inbound tourists want an outbound itinerary?"

Of course not. We then helped set an appropriate platform specifically to increase lead activity and now she can reward herself with a little outbound tourism!

It brought to her an instant applied perspective of contemporary marketing and how the power of content can have incredible reach, but only if done properly.

Here we have 11 experts with free advice that is very likely to make this growing force of marketing just that bit clearer for you.