Learning Objectives

After reading this chapter, you should be able to:

• Understand the core elements of the marketing concept.

• Understand the nature of tourism services and products.

• Identify some of the key elements of marketing in the Nordic tourism system.

Introduction

Marketing is a key ingredient in tourism as it is one of the links between the desire and latent demand of the consumer and conversion into actual experience in the consumption of the tourism product (Duval, 2007). The current definition of marketing used by the American Marketing Association is that ‘Marketing is an organizational function and a set of processes for creating, communicating and delivering value to customers and for managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the organization and its stakeholders’ (American Marketing Association, 2008). To modify Kotler and Levy’s (1969) definition of marketing in tourism management terms: marketing is that function of tourism management that can keep in touch with an organisation’s stakeholders, read their needs and motivations, develop products that meet these needs, and build a communication programme which expresses the purpose and objectives of tourism management and tourism organisations. Whereas the customer is often the visitor, other stakeholders include the destination community, investors (private and public), sponsors, employees, interest groups and government. Tourism marketing is therefore much more than selling (Hall, 2007b).

Selling is a component of tourism marketing; but, selling follows rather than precedes tourism management’s desire to create experiences (products) thatsatisfy its consumers. As Drucker (1973: 54) stated, in one of the classic texts on business management: ‘Marketing is not only broader than selling, it is not a specialised activity at all. It encompasses the entire business. It is the whole business seen from the point of view of its final result, that is, from the customer’s point of view.