Destination Marketing: An Integrated Marketing Communication Approach

Abstract

Travellers are spoilt by choice of available holiday destinations. In today’s fiercely competitive tourism markets, destination competitiveness demands an effective marketing organisation. Two themes underpin Destination Marketing. The first is the challenges associated with promoting multi-attributed destinations in dynamic and heterogeneous markets, and the second is the divide between tourism ‘practitioners’ and academics. Written by a former ‘practitioner’, Destination Marketing bridges industry and academia by synthesising a wealth of academic literature of practical value to DMOs. Key learning outcomes are to enhance students’ understanding of the fundamental issues relating to: • the multi-dimensional nature of destination competitiveness • rationale for the establishment of DMOs • structure, roles, goals and functions of DMOs • the shift in thinking towards destination management • key opportunities, challenges and constraints facing DMOs • complexities of marketing multi-attributed destinations as tourism brands • philosophy of integrated marketing communications • design, implementation and monitoring of effective destination marketing communication strategies • the potential for visitor relationship management • necessity of disaster response planning • destination marketing performance metrics About the Author Dr Steven Pike (PhD) spent 17 years in the tourism industry, working in destination marketing organisations. He is currently Senior Lecturer in the School of Advertising, Marketing and Public relations at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia.