Destination Marketing Strategy for Hong Kong - Case Study Example

Running Head: Destination Marketing Strategy for Hong Kong Name: University: Course: Tutor: Date of Submission: Abstract Tourism marketplace is a highly competitive market since tourism plays a fundamental role in promoting social, cultural and economic vibrancy in various countries. Though, tourism plays a fundamental role towards economic growth, competition in this industry is becoming stiffer with different market participants from various economies becoming participants in the market. In order to compete more effectively in tourism industry there is need for product differentiation through the use of Tourism and Destination Marketing Strategy. In Hong Kong tourism industry is considered to be a major pillar of the economy. Tourisms contribute to approximately 2.8% of Hong Kong’s Gross Domestic Product and it employs over 197,000 persons accounting to approximately 5.6% of total employment. A Hong Kong is a country which has beautiful tourist’s attraction sceneries ranging from its cultural diversity as well as cosmopolitan lifestyle (Hong Kong Tourist Association, pp.75-100, 2000). Culture and heritage sets Hong Kong as part of the Asian world. With over 100 years of colonial history and largely populated with Chinese population Hong Kong is a country with unique fusion of Western and Eastern cultures. The natural beauty of the country offers unspoilt natural parkland as well as spectacular scenery to most tourists’ coming to the country. Filled with magnificent temples, colonial buildings, glass and skyscrapers together with ancient traditions, lively festivals Hong Kong is a country with a living cultural experience (Available at: http://www.gov.hk/en/residents/culture/fun/. Accessed on 30th sept.2010).To effectively make Hong Kong more popular among visitors as well as tourist’s there is need to market the country through Destination Marketing Strategy. This marketing strategy primarily aims at promoting Hong Kong as a tourism country as well as developing excellent strategic partnerships with other industry operators. Additionally, this marketing strategy focuses at developing partnerships with the Hong Kong government as well as the Hong Kong Tourism Board primarily to develop a wide range of diversified tourist attractions in Hong Kong. Additionally, this Destination marketing strategy aims at enhancing Hong Kong’s overall attractiveness hence making the country most admirable tourist attraction destination. Advertising/Promotional campaign An integrated promotional strategy will be developed which comprises various methods of promotion as well as advertising about tourist’s attractions in Hong Kong. These promotion methods will be designed to ensure that tourists in a specific target market receive the right messages and maintain a positive relationship with the Hong Kong along with its tourism offerings. To attract more tourists to Hong Kong as most preferred tourist attraction destination, Promotional pitch will be related to the country’s culture, events, beauty and other attraction sceneries in terms of visitors costs as well as tourists arrangements. Cost effective Advertising will be used in which publicity is going to be used an important ingredient and it will primarily focus on portraying Hong Kong as an attractive tourist country. Advertising/Promotional tools Consumer promotion/Pull Strategy In order to Promote Hong Kong’s natural beauty as well as historical buildings and other tourists attractions sceneries such as the Peak, Giant Buddha, Ocean Park, Golden Bauhinia Square, Repulse Bay, Stanley Market & Murray House, Avenue of Stars, Hong Kong Disneyland, Hong Kong Wetland Park, Ngong Ping 360 among others it is necessary that the Pull strategy be utilized. This strategy will be primarily used as a means of creating awareness of interest in Hong Kong as a globally world class tourist destination both to existing as well as potential visitors through consumer promotion campaigns, travel trade marketing and public relations. Information related to Hong Kong tourist attractions scenes will be distributed to source markets in Mainland China, Taiwan and South Korea as well as emerging markets such as India, Russia and the Middle East through the use internet. The advertisements concerning Hong Kong will be posted on www.discoverhongkong.com consumer website which is available in 14 languages and 20 versions. The use of internet for Hong Kong destination marketing will primarily increase marketing, direct sales as well as online bookings for most visitors. Additionally, the internet will be used by visitors to find information about traveling in Hong Kong, tourist’s attractions, accommodations, culture, history and people. The use of internet will enhance accessibility of information to various visitors from different countries in Asia through face book, yahoo, Google and Twitter. To make Hong Kong more attractive, promotional campaigns will work in association with various travel agencies primarily to offer them some trainings and education on quality tourist services. Since Quality services facilitates high levels of tourist as well as visitors attractions then all tourist guides will be required to complete prescribed training course and pass an Examination. Through, this all the Tour guides will be educated on how to main good conduct when they are interacting with different kinds of visitors as well as visitors. Moreover, a promotional campaign plan will be developed through the help of Hong Kong government by making necessary arrangements in which various Nationals from approximately 200 countries will be provided with an opportunity to visit Hong Kong during visa free periods. This promotion will mainly target overseas visitors who will have an opportunity to stay in Hong Kong for approximately one eighty days. Furthermore, to ensure that we achieve a large market for Hong Kong as one of the desired countries for tourist various visa-abolition agreements with be signed between various countries and Hong Kong in which citizens from these countries will be given an opportunity to visit and stay in Hong Kong with immigration and Visa problems. Visitors visiting from these countries will be allowed to experience Hong Kong’s unique local culture with a feng shui class, enjoying Hong Kong’s traditional lifestyle, heritage tour, and horseracing among others. This will built a strong network between Hong Kong and various countries hence expanding the tourism. Public Relations Promotional Campaign The primary function of this Public Relations Promotional Campaign will aim at promoting Hong Kong as tourist destination country as compared to other nations. Advertisements will be done through the Television, radios, magazines, billboards and newspapers which will focus at promoting cultural as well as arts activities such as Hong Kong Arts Festival, Hong Kong International Film Festival and large-scale arts exhibitions mainly to attract more tourists as well as visitors to Hong Kong in various local museums. As a way of increasing tourists and visitors attractions to Hong Kong cultural attractions as well as other historical buildings such as ancient Chinese temples found in remote areas, a guide to “Hong Kong Arts and Culture” will be published and distributed to all traveling agencies, tourist’s hotels and other tourist attraction sceneries (Available at: http://www.discoverhongkong.com/eng/ accessed on 30th sept.2010). . Additionally, more promotional campaigns will be established through the use of performing arts groups who primarily will focus promoting Hong Kong cultural products hence enriching as well as leveraging Hong Kong arts. To promote Hong Kong’s heritage tourism various programmes will be developed such as Kaleidoscope cultural experience which will be guided by guide tour from Hong Kong traveling agencies. The function of these traveling agencies will be to educate and train various visitors and tourists on the culture of the country as well as other tourist’s attractions sites, traveling arrangements and accommodations. Publication guide book on “Discover Hong Kong by Rail” will be uploaded on the website www.discoverhongkong.com through which promotion of various heritage sites and other attractions along the MTR East and West Rails will be made more accessible to various tourist interested in visiting Hong Kong and other individuals who wish to stay and work in Hong Kong. To develop interest of different visitors to Hong Kong, exhibitions will be organized through which various promotional events will take place. Promotion of events such as traditional Chinese customs and festivals which include the Tin Hau Festival parade in Yuen Long and Cha Kwo Ling, Tam Kung Festival in Shaukeiwan, the Cheung Chau Bun Festival and the Birthday of Lord Buddha celebrations at Po Lin Monastery will take place primarily to promote the Hong Kong Cultural Celebrations. Through, the organizations of such events visitors as well as tourist will be encouraged to take part in the celebrations hence gaining more interest in visiting Hong Kong in relation to other countries. Package and Tour development Promotional Campaigns Package and tour development programmes will be implemented mainly to increase the number of packaged vacations and tour programmes to the Hong Kong. This will be mainly done to increase the traffic flow of tourists to Hong Kong. In order to promote Hong Kong natural beauty to overseas visitors, the Nature Kaleidoscope programme will be organized which will involve overseas visitors visiting Northeast New Territories Island. Additionally, a free tour guide will be organized in which visitors will visit Kadoorie Farm and Botanic Garden, Eco-tour at Tai O on Lantau Island, and Hong Kong Wetland Park. Here the visitors will have a chance to tour Ngong Ping Fun Walk as well as Dolphin watching tour and many hiking tours for free. A magazine on “Discover Hong Kong Nature” will be published and pasted on the Hong Kong Tourisms Board through which overseas visitors will have a chance to look at and familiarize themselves with Hong Kong’s natural beauty. Working in Collaboration with the Hong Kong Tourism Board a Great Outdoors Hong Kong event will be organized which will be used to show case Hong-Kong’s hiking trails and its natural attractions. Additionally, this collaboration will primarily focus at promoting the Hong Kong ecological richness and diversity through promoting green tourism to the Northeast Territories. Through, this initiative the National Geopark itineraries will be advertised to overseas primarily to attract more visitors to Hong Kong. This programme will enhance reinforcement of Geopark itineraries in which visitors will enjoy guided tours of geological landscapes of Tolo Channel, Double Haven, Sai Kung islands and the Ung as well as nightlife and travel experience in Hong Kong (Available at: http://www.gov.hk/en/about/abouthk/factsheets/docs/tourism.pdf accessed on 30th sept.2010). These programmes will be developed mainly to assist tour operators to develop new tours and packages which feature Hongkong.Information distribution and fulfillment through the distribution of literature e.g. travel guides, maps, accommodation guides, special events, calendars among others will play a great role in the promotional campaign. Additionally the promotional campaigns will involve the use of videos featuring Hong Kong and which will be distributed through the use of CD-ROM to visitors and Tourists visiting Hong Kong The CD- ROMs will be made available for free to the visitors as well as tourist and they will be placed in big tourist hotels, game parks, touring vehicles and others will be given to tour guides. Travel trade marketing push strategy This Strategy will involve informing and educating trade intermediaries about the Hong Kong and familiarizing them with its tourism attractions, events and other resources. This will include facilitating travel trade and travel media familiarization tours, and facilitating travel trade exhibitions through world travel market.To achieve the desired market a close a partnership with HKTB will be developed through which a close working relationship will be established between the Hong Kong and its travel trade partners. Familiarization trips to Hong Kong will be organized and various trade travel partners from Asia as well as other continents will be invited to take part. This will enhance the promotion of various tourists’ attractions places in Hong Kong as well as other multi-destination itineraries. Through, the collaboration of HKTB and Government Tourist Office a series of Road shows will be organized in various countries in Asia, Europe, North America, South America among other countries mainly to promote multi-destination travel packages featuring Hong Kong, Guangdong Province and Macau among other places(Available at: http://www.tourism.gov.hk/english/welcome/welcome.html. Accessed on 30th sept.2010). Cost of advertising The estimated advertising expenditure is approximated to be $150 billion. Expenditure on television will be estimated to be 20.5%, bill boards 18.8%, Newspapers 17.3 %, radio 5.7%, yellow pages 4.8 %, magazines 3.7% and the Internet 1.5%, other media 5.7% and remaining percentage will account for road shows in various countries. Monitoring In order to ensure the effectiveness of this marketing strategy, the programmes will be developed and coordinated in an effort to achieve the outlined goals and objectives. Careful planning and implementation of various promotional as well as advertising campaigns will be evaluated to determine how effective and successful they have been in achieving the expected audience and market target (Steven, pp. 116-130, 2008). This will be examined by evaluating the number of visitors or tourists visiting Hong Kong. Online bookings will be examined to see if more visitors are interested in visiting Hong Kong and how different people perceive Hong Kong in terms of its natural beauty and as a World class tourist attraction country. In case the target has not been properly reached appropriate adjustments will be done by eliminating in effective promotional and advertising campaigns and redevelopment of new objectives (Chris & Cooper, pp.213-220, 2008). Moreover, the results will be tracked and monitored in terms of environmental changes in the Tourism industry which will be done mainly to adjust the marketing strategy as a way of attracting more tourists to Hong Kong. To determine if the desired objectives have been achieved, weekly, quarterly and monthly results will be analyzed in terms of total number of tourists who visited Hong Kong, average length of stay, room nights booked, total room nights used and their total economic impact on Hong Kong. Additionally, measurements will be evaluated in terms of number of trade or travel shows attended, promotional material distributed, visitors reaction to advertising material, number of familiarisation tours, number of visitors who attended the familiarisation tourism shows, exhibitions, number of ads placed, number of travel agents contacted, total number of tourist bookings, inquiries among others. References Chris, C.,& Cooper, M., H (2008).Contemporary tourism: an international approach. Publisher: Butterworth-Heinemann, pp.213-220 Steven, P (2008).Destination marketing: an integrated marketing communication approach. Publisher: Butterworth- Heinemann, pp.116-130 Hong Kong Tourist Association (2000).Tourism in Hong Kong: global prospects, regional perspectives and strategic issues. Publisher: Hong Kong Tourist Association, pp.75- 100 Available at: http://www.discoverhongkong.com/eng/ accessed on 30th sept.2010. Available at: http://www.gov.hk/en/about/abouthk/factsheets/docs/tourism.pdf accessed on 30th sept.2010. Available at: http://www.gov.hk/en/residents/culture/fun/. Accessed on 30th sept.2010. Available at: http://www.tourism.gov.hk/english/welcome/welcome.html. Accessed on 30th sept.2010. Read More