Destination Management Strategy - Essay Example

DESTINATION MANAGEMENT STRATEGY College Destination Management Strategy Tourism is one of the most crucial economic activities in many countries. Sustainable tourism aims at benefiting not only the organization but also the society and the country at large. A destination marketing organization is any organization that is responsible for marketing and rolling out the products and the services of a given tourist destination to the target customers. The role of the destination marketing organization is to create a give the subject organization at a competitive advantage over competing destinations. Globally, tourism has become competitive business and a strong marketing strategy is crucial if an organization has to profit in this industry. The entrance of new competing destinations has heightened competition prompting the destination marketing organizations to change their business strategies. Since each country has unique goals and objectives for tourism, it is crucial that the marketing strategies match the gaols of the specific country. For any country to position its tourism marketing strategy, it is crucial to design a visionary plan, design strategies to promote the plan, source funds and support for the program and work out a correction plan to counter the challenges that are likely to arise during the strategy implementation process. The challenges arising in the tourism require a different approach of destination management to stimulate growth and ensure that all stakeholders in tourism benefit from the investment plans. The first step towards efficiency destination marketing is to build a vision and a plan that involves all the stakeholders in the industry (Shirazi & Som, 2011). The vision of the destination marketing should be to use an integrative approach that embraces changes, flexibility and one that is customer focussed. The customer should be the main focus of the organization, as they are the source of profit for the organization. On this note, the objective should be to understand the customer needs, and develop strategies to satisfy them. Additionally, the vision of the project should be to involve all the stakeholders of the tourism industry in the implementation process. England is an example of the countries that have focussed on the customer needs to stimulate a tourism growth of over 5% per year (Prideaux & Cooper, 2002). By satisfying the customers, the locals, the employees and the government, it is possible to overcome the challenges that affect the tourism market. Destination marketing seeks to satisfy all the stakeholders by actively involving them in the plans of the organization. Another vision of the destination management plan would be to use technology to reach out for more tourists. The rate of inflow of tourists determines the profitability of the specific organization and hence the development of the society surrounding it. In the recent past, technological advances have changed the business marketing strategy in the world. The proliferation of website and internet technology has revolutionized the marketing approaches. The vision of the destination management should be to develop an effective online strategy to reach out more customers from all over the world. The social media is one of the target markets sites that have become a hub for many tourism customers (Pomering, Noble & Johnson, 2011). The strategy should aim at social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google plus are potential sites for destination advertisement. Since most of the tourists are within the network aware generation, it would be easy to reach for them and market products and services (Pongponrat & Pongquan, 2007). Secondly, this would give an opportunity for the tourists to provide their own input and suggest their tastes and preferences. Creating a strong online marketing strategy would increase the customers inflow and ensure that our tourism destination remain competitive in the global market. After this, the next step would be to develop a plan to implement the destination marketing strategy. The objective here would be to ensure that all the stakeholders of the implementation plan are aware of the goals of the organization and are willing to collaborate in the implementation (Oliver, 2013). The first step would be to understand the various tourism attraction features that influence the inflow of tourists in a particular company. To understand this factor more clearly, it would be crucial to seek customer feedback and to incorporate it in the business plan. A market research would be crucial to understand the customer preferences and tastes in an effort to satisfy the customer demands. Organizations that focus on the customer preferences are more likely to attract more customers. An efficient way to conduct this research would be to provide a customer feedback portal for the customers on the web platform. Since the website is not geographically limited, it is possible to obtain feedback from all over the world and also to target more customers. The research would be the first leg towards customer satisfaction strategy for the promotion program. A factor a thorough market survey, the promotion strategy should seek to garner support from all the stakeholders of the tourism industry. The success of the plan depends on the employees, the customers, the government and the local community’s contribution during the plan implementation process. The local community input is very important in developing sustainable tourism. In countries such as China, where landmarks and recreation sites are important tourism destinations, the local communities have frustrated tourism due to their unwillingness to cooperate with the tourism managers (Su & Wall, 2014). On this note, the central focus should be to get the local communities on board the project implementation plan to ensure that they foster tourism by remaining friendly to visitors and collaborating with them in service delivery. To get their attention, it would be wise to provide employment for them, scholarships for their children and to bring development to the locality. Secondly, team leadership would be crucial to bring together the employees to work as a team. Since the tourism industry requires hospitality and good customer service, training the employee on this area would be crucial in streamlining service delivery. Getting on board all the stakeholders helps the organization to implement the destination management plan with a greater efficiency. Next, it would be crucial to focus on the market operations to build a strong customer experience. In this strategy, the destination management plan would focus on creating a strong online network, attracting the tourists, and satisfying all their needs. The web technology, the social media, TV advertisement would all form part of the marketing plan. The TV advertisement would attract local visitors while the online strategies would focus on the global scope. Whereas many destination marketing organizations have ignored the local tourists, countries such as US have profited immensely from local tourism who have become the majority visitors in the tourism firms. An attractive, well optimized website containing the organization services, offers and promotions would serve well in creating the global awareness. The website should be customized for target countries in terms of colour, language and specific attraction features (Rodrigues & Prideaux, 2012). In countries such as US, they prefer to visit tourism destinations where they can view animals and get to enjoy warm temperatures. Also, it would be a priority to focus on the customer satisfaction. Providing more hospitality services such as accommodation, transport services and free wireless internet would create a favourable environment for visitors. In addition, the management should be directly involved in any problems of challenges that the visitors face to ensure that they enjoy their visit. The financial perspective of the destination management is crucial as it determines the ability of the management to implement the plotted plan. The budget or funding of the destination marketing plan is important for any organization. One way would be to involve the government in funding the stated project. In many countries, the government supports tourism as one of the major foreign exchange earner in these countries. In countries such as South Africa, the government finances most of the tourism operations to support this industry (Vodenska, 2013). The tourism organization should also get the government on board in developing regulations that support tourism and ones that encourage the tourists to visit. For instance, friendly foreign exchange rates would make it affordable for tourists to visit the local tourism destinations. In countries such as England, the government supports tourism by making it easy for tourists to enter into the country and contributing to tourism marketing. Another source of funding would be international tourism bodies such as the Supra national organizations that support worldwide tourism. Raising tourism funds would help to support the implementation plan. One of the objectives of the destination management plan should be to reduce the expenses through optimal funds utilization. Thus, the management should focus on eliminating redundant projects and diverting funds to more crucial activities. For instance, it would be wise to shorten and reduce the TV advertisement activities to save on funds. This money can be channelled to other services such as hiring a web development manager to update the website and to strengthen the online strategy. Focussing on online advertisement would help to save on funds without jeopardizing the marketing strategy. Although the initial cost for online advertisement may be high, it is cheaper in the long run and will be more effective (Hunter-Jones, 2011). Another cost reduction strategy would be to focus on specific nations and to develop the increase the geographical scope as time progresses. This would ensure that the budget remains low but the target markets are given full attention. When the budget remains minimal, it reduces the financial burden, which is usually high at the initial stage. Monitoring the financial usage at all stages of the project development will ensure that there is minimal wastage and the organization profits from reduced expenses and high profits. Notably, destination marketing organization must anticipate various challenges as they endeavour to attract tourists in their destination. The ability to develop mitigation plans against any challenges that may arise during the project implementation will guarantee the materialization of the project. One of the challenges that is likely to arise is in the process of plan implementation is finance shortage. The project requires a lot of money before the launch of the whole plan. This makes it challenging to develop the plan within the drawn time schedule. To overcome this challenge, the destination management plan would focus on short term and long term plans. In the short term, the organization should focus on the domestic market to ensure that there is a quick inflow of finances. For instance, providing promotions and offers for group visitors would ensure that the organization generates income in the short term. This kind of strategy would ensure that the company has enough finances to target the international market that is beneficial in the long term. Secondly, the organization may result to loans from various banks to support the program, which would ensure that the program does not fail to succeed. Another challenge that is likely to occur is employee conflict (Bagarić & Žitinić, 2013). This challenge can be addressed by forming an employee development committee to ensure that the work team is strong and that the work does not come into a halt. In conclusion, destination management organization has a big challenge in marketing tourism firms during an era of global competition. As more investors venture into the tourism market and the technology changes the marketing strategies are bound to change. The role of destination marketing organization is to design a modest marketing approach that will give the organizations a higher competitive advantage to remain profitable in this industry. The best vision of destination management should be to provide an integrative approach to destination marketing where all stakeholders including the tourists, the local communities, the government and the employee contribute to the development. The destination managers should set the customer tastes as the priority and seek methods to satisfy them. In implementing and promoting the project, they should seek customer, employee and community loyalty. Since the projects are expensive, the managers should try to reduce their expenses and focus on profit maximization. Their success also depends on their ability of destination managers to formulate strategies to overcome challenges that are inevitable in the project implementation process. 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