Destination Marketing Organizations - Assignment Example

Tourism Tourism Answers Destination Marketing Organizations (DMO) are involved with the promotion of a particular area and important elements of travel such as accommodation, transportation, tour guides, restaurants, tourist sites and events (Skift, 2013). Unlike leisure tourists, business tourists may not be interested in site seeing or visiting attractions as the main purpose of their travel. The needs of a business tourist differs from that of a leisure tourist in that they usually seek premium services and normally have high expectations of the services (Swarbrooke and Homer, 2007). However, business travelers may also become leisure travelers once their period of business is over; many business tourists may also travel with their families (Swarbrooke and Homer, 2007). Business travelers as the name suggests usually travel for business related purposes such as attending meetings, exhibitions, conferences, and the like. Business travelers need corporate hospitality services and demand greater comfort and services such as concierge, photocopying, Wi-Fi connectivity, printing, dry-cleaning, and pressing, and so on. Over the years and with developments in technology, the needs of the business traveler has changed. However, the business travel industry still remains a lucrative market for DMOs to tap the potential. Some needs of business travelers include hotel reservations, transport reservations, flight bookings, 24/7 support, phone call, SMS, chauffeurs, security arrangements, travel insurance, car rental, et cetera. Most of these needs fall under the domain of DMOs who can take care of most of the services required by business travelers. Hence, DMOs are better able to cater to the business traveler by offering the business customer what she or he needs. These include destination-specific services ranging from hotel bookings to car rentals and air ticketing. DMOs are frequently involved with promotional activities that market travel and hospitality services that are specific to a destination. However, in recent years DMOs have seen a decline in usage due to online services that have taken over the department previously handled by DMOs. One may book flights, rooms, and find places to visit, and do many more things by simply using sites like Tripadvisor, Yelp, and Wimdu. Recent trends in communication, developments in technology and changes in the consumption patterns have transformed the buyer-supplier relationships in the business tourism industry (Davidson, 1994). The tourism industry has been greatly revolutionized as a result of technology and the World Wide Web. DMOs also failed to keep up pace with the changing times and incorporate technology in its working (Skift, 2013). The traditional DMO model is now faced with many challenges. The arrival of value added and convenient online travel planning services have really eased travel for consumers. There is difference though; business travelers may prefer convenience over cheap deals. This shows that business travelers have a greater ability to pay higher for better services (Sawrbrooke and Homer, 2007). The airlines and hotel sector has realized the high profitability of the consumer segment. These sectors are now focusing their attention towards targeting the business traveler’s market due to their frequency of travel and greater ability to pay higher prices. Therefore, the business traveler’s market has grown considerably during the years to become of the most lucrative customer segments. Being important customers, there is no way DMOs could ignore the potential in business guests. In fact, business travelers can generate more revenues for DMOs than can any other customer segment. Recent economic trends such as globalization has increased travel among business executives which means that business travelers are using corporate tourism services more than before. Hence, the need for business travel has increased dramatically with globalization. A great percentage of tourists and travelers are business travelers which has directed the attention of major airlines and hotels that are now targeting business travelers due to their profitability. DMOs can also capitalize the opportunity as business travelers are profitable consumers with a greater spending as compared to leisure travelers on average. DMOs cannot therefore ignore the importance of business travelers. Business travelers compose a significant percentage of the total travelers figure indicating their centrality to the tourism and hospitality sector. DMOs should expand their target segments to include business travelers because of their size and capacity. According to a forecast conducted by US Travel Association (2013), business travel revenues are estimated to grow from $452.0 million in 2013 to $465.0 million. Although leisure travelers are generally greater in volume and in the total revenue, business travelers are also important tourists who have needs that can be catered to by DMOs. In fact, DMOs can benefit from catering to business travelers are they manage many departments that can satisfy the business travelers’ needs. Hence, there is a need for DMOs to modernize in terms of modern technology and position themselves to attract both, leisure as well as business travelers. In closing, DMOs can utilize the opportunity to target business travelers as they are a lucrative market segment and have needs that can be met by services provided by DMOs. Answer 2: Sustainable tourism does not have a particular definition that is widely accepted by the people. Various people and books have given sustainable tourism a definition but these definitions give sustainable tourism a very one sided kind of look. As sustainable tourism cannot be simply defined, maybe it is feasible to suggest a set of propositions that should carry any kind of proposition towards sustainable tourism management. Some of these prepositions are that the approach views planning, management and policy as suitable and, actually necessary responses to the issues of human and natural resource ill-use in tourism. Long term thinking is more crucial as compared to short term thinking. The troubles faced by sustainable tourism management are not just environmental ones but also include managerial, economic, political, cultural and social ones (Swarbrooke, 1999). The suggestion and management propositions made for the growth of sustainable tourism are applicable to all types of tourism whether it is mass tourism or small tourism sections. Sustainable tourism needs the enlightened involvement of all the relevant stakeholders also including the prominent political leaders of that area or country so that massive participation can be guaranteed (Otto, 2010). Tourism compromises of various kinds of organizations. These different kinds of stakeholders in tourism have different suggestions in the meaning of sustainable tourism. Mass tourism is usually considered as unsustainable as usually tourism supplies significant amount of economic advantages to many countries but along with these advantages also come up with some setbacks. These setbacks include severe effects to the environmental as well as the social and cultural backgrounds of the particular country or city or area. When tourists choose to continue on with their high standard consumptions, it becomes a problem for the host country that does not have the right means to safeguard their resources from the burden of mass tourism (Neto, 2003). The negative effects of mass tourism have been much especially on the developing and under developed countries because they do not have proper management to protect their environmental, social and cultural rights. Usually developing and under developed countries do not have so many tourist spots and attractions due to which their left over few forests, beaches, lake sides, river beds, rivers and waterfalls get over exhausted as the tourists have nowhere else to go. With large amounts of people landing up on these natural spots, they get damaged over the time and this causes the natural beauty of that particular country to distort causing a lot of damages to the environment. Mass tourism is usually not sustainable as when large amount of people tend to land up over a developing or under developed country then handling such a big amount of people becomes a problem for the host country as already it has a lot of pressure from its financial conditions and then to counter the effects from these tourists becomes a great problem for the country. The developed countries usually have a lot of sightseeing places like beautiful malls, leisure areas, beautiful and maintained beaches, mountainous areas, rivers, waterfalls and forests that keeps the tourists distributed not over burdening any particular place. The even have proper rules and regulations that protect their environment, cultural and social back grounds. These countries already have more than enough and if sometimes things get out of control when mass tourism takes place they can take control over the situation and direct the load towards other places. Various scholars after understanding such situations faced by the under developed and developing countries have tried to come out with some kinds of solutions for these countries. One of these solutions is the substitution of regular tourist products with new green products. Some scholars have even advised that proper tourism on small scales should take place rather than big mass tourism as it will be easy for the government to manage and handle them. Another scholar suggests that a brand new and innovative proposition should bring a better way for all kinds of tourism to become more sustainable and responsible that should also compromise of big-scale growth programs. The scholar also suggests that growth should take place in the environment of the native social and economic growth and should include all aspects of the well being of the people (Wisansing, 2005). Scholars have basically suggested that if more attention is paid by the host country to the social and economic conditions mass tourism can get sustainable as more leisure places such as discos, pubs, malls and various other attractions will help take the tourist load away from the basic natural attractions of the country. This will not only help safeguard the natural resources, the environment but also the reputation and social as well as economical well being of that country. References Davidson, R. (1994). Business travel.. [online] Cabdirect.org. Available at: http://www.cabdirect.org/abstracts/19941807100.html;jsessionid=A8869F4230B1C74335A7E382D3E3275D;jsessionid=1A5EF85A215D9034013E0B061F9D3396 [Accessed 3 Jan. 2015]. Neto, F. (2003). A new approach to sustainable tourism development: Moving beyond environmental protection. Natural Resources Forum, 27(3), pp.212-222. Otto, E. (2010). Strategic Approaches for Developing Sustainable and Strategic Approaches for Developing Sustainable and Competitive Tourism Products. 1st ed. [ebook] Available at: http://dtxtq4w60xqpw.cloudfront.net/sites/all/files/pdf/11otto_5srmeeting.pdf [Accessed 3 Jan. 2015]. Skift, (2013). The Destination Marketing Organization Model in Tourism Is Broken. [online] Available at: http://skift.com/2013/07/24/the-destination-marketing-organization-model-in-tourism-is-broken/ [Accessed 3 Jan. 2015]. Swarbrooke, J. (1999). Sustainable tourism management. Wallingford, Oxon, UK: CABI Pub. Swarbrooke, J. and Horner, S. (1999). Consumer behaviour in tourism. Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann. Wisansing, J. (2005). A Review of Marketing Ideas within the Evolution of Tourism Planning Thought. 1st ed. Read More