Destination Marketing: Principles, Campaigns, and Challenges

This document discusses the principles of destination marketing, including setting marketing budgets, identifying target markets, attracting target markets, studying competitors, and monitoring results. It also explores the key elements of destination marketing campaigns, such as attractions, accessibility, destination facilities, images, and prices. Additionally, it covers the promotion and advertisement techniques used by G Adventures, the role of Destination Marketing Organizations (DMOs), and the challenges faced by DMOs in promoting tourism destinations. The challenges include overseeing marketing campaigns, attracting conventions and events, coordinating management of destination elements, and ensuring sustainable tourism development.

DESTINATION MARKETING

Contents
TASK 1..........................................................................................................................................................3
PRINCIPLES OF DESTINATION MARKETING.................................................................................3
TASK 2..........................................................................................................................................................4
TASK 3..........................................................................................................................................................6
PROMOTION AND ADVERTISEMENT.......................................................................................................6
TASK 4..........................................................................................................................................................7
ROLE OF DMO..........................................................................................................................................7
TASK 5..........................................................................................................................................................8
CHALLENGES FACED BY DMOs.................................................................................................................8

INTRODUCTION
G Adventures is a small group of travel company and social enterprise founded in Canada
in the year 1990 by Bruce Poon Tip, the company offers more than 700 different tour in more
than 100 countries and carries around 200000 travelers each year. In this report I have discussed
different marketing principles of destination marketing planning to promote the destination in
London. Also, there is a brief discussion about the key element of a range of destination
marketing campaign to analyze the objectives. After that the different digital marketing tools are
used for promoting and advertising specific destination in London. Lastly there is discussion
about the role of destination marketing organizations (DMOs) and the challenges faced by these
DMOs, these challenges are being explained by a range of examples.
MAIN BODY
Destination marketing is a type of marketing that promotes a destination including a town, city,
region or country with the purpose of increasing the number of visitors at that destination and to
promote these destination some marketing techniques are being used which is explained below:
TASK 1
PRINCIPLES OF DESTINATION MARKETING
Setting your marketing budgets
These marketing budgets are set on the basis of the turnover G Adventures makes and generally
this budget is set as a percent of the turnover(Marasco, 2018). For tourism industry these budget
are generally 10% of the revenue for both domestic and international destination marketing.

These budgets are being set so that small companies like that of G Adventures can organize their
costs. Therefore it is important for G Adventures to thoroughly plan to target these destination
market in both domestic and international markets to widen the customers as much as possible.
Identifying your target markets
Identification of your customer base is very important for the foundation of G Adventures for
their destination marketing plan. This target market should be based on the needs of the
customers to gain more market share. Understanding the needs of customers will help in
developing the product the customer wants, so G Adventures should identify what destination are
best in London and offer the customer that only so that they can gain their attention. Since G
Adventures is a small company the company should not try to cover every destination but should
focus mainly on the customer preferred destination and these destinations and provide the best
service they can to their customers.
Attract your identified target market
This principle includes attracting your targeted customer base to the destination. This requires an
effective marketing plan centered toward the customer promoting the customer to our
destination. So your marketing plan must ensure that what drives the people to come to your
destination and for that G Adventures should offer different packages. From these different
packages the customer can choose their required destination.
Study the competitors
The company should always keep their competitors in minds while forming their strategies. The
destination the competitors are offering, the prices being offered by the competitors as if the
customers find the competitors packages more attractive then G Adventures, they would not buy
G Adventure’s packages. So G Adventures should always keep an edge to their competition. The
different combination of destination packages the competitors are offering should be also seen
and G Adventures should also provide similar packages if the customer demand so.
Develop tourism products for the target market
G Adventures should market their product in such a way that their product appears to be more
appealing than their competitors. For this G Adventures can provide some offers if the customer
take a whole package from them. Some of the packages being offered by G Adventures are Asia
tour, South America tour, China tour, Europe tour.
Monitor your results
After applying all these destination marketing principles the company should carefully analyse
their results and draw conclusions about whether they have achieved their targets or not. If G
Adventures then it is well and good and this will show that the company is progressing, but if

these goals are not achieved then G Adventures should analyse the variances being occurred and
learn from these variances so that they do not occur in the future.
TASK 2
In this task the key element of destination marketing campaign of G Adventures are being
discussed. These destination marketing campaign plays a vital role in shaping the success of
tourism sector. These key elements are attractions, accessibility, destination facilities, images
and prices.
Attractions
The first key element of destination marketing for G Adventures is attractions of the destinations.
This include the environment, natural attractions like landscapes, seascapes, beaches and
climates etc., any historic attractions like forts, monarchy, museums etc. these attractions also
include any seasonal attractions like any famous cultural festivals, opera etc., these attractions
must be kept in mind so to suggest the customer with the best packages. However these are
mainly the attractions for all the customer who looking for leisure other non leisure customer
who are mainly on business trips are attracted by the destination which can provide them with
the cheapest accommodations, as they are visiting only for work.
Accessibility
This element include the infrastructure and transport technology which s provided by G
Adventures. These mainly includes airports, motor ways, rail and bus networks all these
transport technology becomes an important element as the customers see all the transport cost
and time taken to reach the destination. Therefore these option must be accessible by the
customer in term of 3 critical factors which are cost, convenience and speed. For the customer of
G Adventures the choice of travel is determined by the destination. G Adventures can compare
there transport facilities with its customers to see if there is anything they can improve to comfort
their customers
Destination facilities
This element is very important and G Adventures should focus on this because this factor will
help in improving the brand image of G Adventures. This element include the facilities the
tourists will be provided at their destination. Facilities are the needs and wants of potential
visitors from the targeted visitors. These facilities include accommodation restaurants, cafes and
bars, transport at the destinations etc., all these facilities will help G Adventures to build a brand
image which will help it in the long run as if the customer are satisfied with the facilities the
customer will provide with positive feedback.
Images

This elements is generally used to attract the customer. An image typically reflects the quality,
design, style of attractions, and other the natural environment. This will give the customer a basic
idea about the place they are going to visit and this will help the customers of G Adventures in
deciding whether to go to the place or not. G Adventures can put images of their customer on
their websites to promote the place and the customers can see these images easily on their
websites.
Price
The last element for destination marketing campaign is the price. This price is decided upon all
the facilities and attractions of the place. Price include all the cost include in travel,
accommodations, and involvement in a range of selected services at the destinations(Séraphin,
2016). These prices will change upon seasonal basis as during holidays the prices will be but
obvious high as there will be large demands as compared to an off season when the prices will be
low. The company must have a wide range of price option to choose from so that the customer
have the option to pick the package of there suitability. So G Adventures should keep in mind all
these factors before coming up with a final price and this price should not be in excess or the
customer who cant afford will switch to other competitors.
TASK 3
PROMOTION AND ADVERTISEMENT
This is a brief discussion about G Adventures promotional and advertisement techniques. They
have used these to attract a large number of audience and have been successful.
In 2018 G Adventures have launched an offer called sale of the year in which they advertised
that how choosing their packages will save their customer $200, this was very effective and the
company did a lot of sale with this offer. The company G Adventures should always try to create
a brand image through their advertising and promoting their deals on a variety a platforms. With
online website to help the company has a lot platform to promote their product. They can use
different application to advertise, where they can have pop up adds which directly lead the
customer to the company’s websites and help the customer to know about the company’s
product. While advertisement the company should try and in such a way so that they can
provide more of the information to the customer about why they should visit the place G
Adventures is suggesting (Pike, 2015). For example if the company is suggesting tours is Europe
the company should mention the places the customer would visit in the whole tour and all the
natural places, historic places etc., they would visit this would give the customer a
comprehensive idea about the whole package and thus they can compare their package with
others and this would help them in deciding whether to go with G Adventures plan or not. G
Adventures can also provide giveaways in any event, this would result in customer been attracted
toward the company and it would also help in creating a brand image(Kladou and Mavragan,

2015). G Adventures can also provide sponsorship in major sporting event like cricket to
advertise their product, this is great idea to promote their product as in these events large
audience can easily be targeted and this would be very advantageous to the company. For
example the company can take out a lucky member to go for a free Paris tour in any major
sporting event this would gain the public attention toward G Adventures and this cost would be
like an investment for the company which would greatly benefit it. Nowadays social media is the
biggest platform for promoting any product. All type of leverage social media, blogs and online
videos allows company like that of G Adventures to target a large number of audience. Social
media sites like Instagram and Facebook have a major influence on people and so promoting
and advertising G Adventures packages would be very beneficial. The company can have their
own page on these websites at which they can post the photos of their customer journey and ask
their customer to give review on these social media this would greatly help in promotion of the
company’s packages. The company can also form partnership with the local tourist company and
they can then acts as a parent company as these local company will sell their product under the
company’s name and since the local company’s have more influence over the local people,
these local people would believe them more then the company directly approaching them. These
are all the marketing techniques which G Adventures can use to promote and advertise their
packages and attract the target audience.
TASK 4
ROLE OF DMO
In this section the different roles of the DMO which is Destination Marketing Organization has
been discussed about how these organization plays a key role in the long term development of a
destination, by forming an effective travel and tourism industry.
The major role of DMO is overseeing, creating and implementing marketing campaign and
promotions to inspire travelers to visit their destination. This will help G Adventures in creating
the money for value service for their customers and making their experience as wonderful as
they can.
DMOs formulate campaign to attract the convention, meeting and events to G Adventures
customer’s destination. This organization works with the local planners to plan out different
events for the customers for their best experience.
DMO also interact with the leisure, vacation, and local travel companies on behalf of the
companies like G Adventures so that when the customer reaches the destination their would be
no inconvenience regarding the quality of these services and so the customer enjoy the trip. This
will help companies like G Adventures to build their brand image in the eyes of the customer.

Analyses have shown that each year around $4 billion is spent annually on funding and financing
DMOs around the world as they provide their invaluable services these tourism company like G
Adventures.
DMO coordinate management of all the element once the customer reaches their destination.
There role has become more important in the 21st century as the customer in the 21st century
looks for quality more then the money factor and they are completely not satisfied with poor
quality services.
Globally tourism has been growing at a fast rate and the role of DMOs are very important for the
long term survival of the business. DMOs provide sustainable balance between economic
benefits, and socio cultural benefits and the cost to the environment in order to optimize the
adverse impact of tourism.
DMO prepare a master plan for the marketing strategy for the destination. Thus DMOs are
basically the destination developers acting as catalysts and facilitators of the realization of
tourism.
DMOs are generally department of government institutions, which are basically a partnership
with several state to facilitate the customer of these states when they come on a visit to any
destinations. These state institutions assign a private contractor to handle all the affairs of the
tourist visiting their state. This is proven to be the best model for serving the customers in the
best possible manner.
Without the help of DMOs the customer would not be satisfied with the services of the company
and would create a bad image of the company in the eyes of the company, so G Adventures
should form a tie up with some DMOs for the smooth experience of its customer when they
reaches their destination.
The future development of destination mainly depend upon these DMOs and helps in the
creation of consolidated management structure on the local level. Global tourism development
tendencies provide a central place for the DMO as a standard management unit for the
destination. provide a central place for the DMO as a standard management unit for the
destination aim at guaranteeing the prosperity of the local population; maximizing visitor
satisfaction; minimizing the negative impact of tourism by maintaining a sustainable balance
between the economic benefits and the socio-cultural and ecological expenses(Chon, 2015)
.
TASK 5
CHALLENGES FACED BY DMOs
In this section there has been a brief discussion about the challenges faced by the DMOs in the
market. These challenges are based on the researches of the different organizations.

One of the major challenge being faced is that the customer might speak different language from
the country the are visiting this will create communication problems to the customer so to face
these type of challenges DMO must have a tourist guide which speak different language so that
customer can communicate with the agents. These type of communication barriers can affect the
DMOs working. This challenge is often being faced by the DMOs all around the world so they
must prepare to tackle these problems which would be beneficial in the long run. DMOs must
also take care that the customer when visit other countries take care of the rules and laws of the
country as if they don’t take care there customer might get into trouble and there whole
experience might get spoiled. The guide mist always be there to help the customer in case of any
problem. So these things should be taken care of as these are also a challenge for the DMOs .
Other challenges include collaborating with other state members as they might not agree to the
terms and conditions of the DMOs, this might lead to company like G Adventures as these
challenges might restrict certain countries from visiting so there should b proper investment by G
Adventures and the DMOs operating so that the customer have a smooth experience and these
challenges can easily be dealt with(Mariani, Di Felice and Mura, 2016)
.
Another challenge is that DMOs has to incur a lot of cost in coordinating with the states so they
should use cost effective techniques to cut as much cost as they can but they also have to take
care of the quality service is being provided to the customers. So a balance between cost and
quality service should be made.
There must be a coordination between the locals destination manager and the DMOs so that any
problem with the customer can be informed to the DMO supervisor and proper action could be
taken and if there is not proper communication between these manager and the DMOs then the
customer may have some inconvenience and this may lead to damage the reputation of G
Adventures as the package is being provided by the company.
These challenges can only be dealt if there is a huge amount of investment being made in these
DMOs as there is no other way round to tackle them
CONCLUSION
In this report we have come to conclusion about the different principle of marketing planning,
in this there was a brief discussion about all the principles. Then we have evaluated the elements
of a range of destination marketing campaign and about how the success of the customer
satisfaction depends upon these campaign and the objectives G Adventures has satisfied in
providing their customer a good quality service. In the next task we have a discussion about the
different digital marketing tools we can use for the promotion and advertisement of G
Adventures. Then at the end of the report we have come to know about the roles of Destination
marketing organizations (DMOs) in marketing a destination and all the challenges being faced

by DMOs in handling the customer and dealing with different states rules and regulation. So this
was a comprehensive report about the whole G Adventures organization destination marketing
strategies.

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