Marketing Plan for Tourism Company

This assignment provides a thorough marketing plan for a tourism company, including market analysis, budget allocation, promotion, sales publicity, direct selling, and monitoring and controlling. The plan utilizes a marketing mix and strategy to successfully launch the new product within the market. It is based on research from various books and journals in the field of marketing and tourism.

Marketing Officer
in Travel & Tourism

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
LO 1.................................................................................................................................................1
COVERED IN PPT................................................................................................................1
LO 2.................................................................................................................................................1
P3. Marketing Mix..................................................................................................................1
LO 3.................................................................................................................................................3
P4. Marketing Plan.................................................................................................................3
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................5
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................7

INTRODUCTION
Marketing is defined as the procedure concerned with development of healthy relations
with clients. This is done with a view to develop a desire in them to make enquiry for the
offerings of entity. In other words, it can be seen as the tactics and strategies applied by the
corporation to persuade the purchase behaviour of consumers to make them undergo a purchase.
This is regarded as one of the core functions of any business entity operating as a part of the
corporate world. For this project, Thomas Cook is selected as the company. This is an entity
operating within Travel and Tourism sector, having its headquarters situated in United Kingdom.
This project will take into account the roles and responsibilities of marketing function together
with their interrelation to other business functions. Also, it will explore the manner in which
marketing mix is used by the respective entity to attain growth. Lastly, a marketing plan is
developed for the launch of a new product.
LO 1
COVERED IN PPT
LO 2
P3. Marketing Mix
Marketing mix is a theory of marketing consisting of 7 elements which are under the
control of company and assist in influencing the purchase behaviour of consumers. The elements
which form a part of this theory provide assistance to an organisation in ascertainment of the key
aspects pertaining to the corporation. In this regard, Thomas Cook is a well renowned travel and
tourism company which aims at the satisfaction of clients with the effectice exploitation of all
the elements of marketing mix. Following is the comparison of application of marketing mix
within Thomas Cook and one of its competitors, Cosmos Holidays.
Element Thomas Cook Cosmos Holidays
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Product This is a famous and well established
travel and tourism corporation which
provides a number of holiday and
corporate packages to people. This entity
provides a number of services such as
travelling, sight seeing, accommodation
etc. With the help of its wide array of
offerings, the entity is successful in
gaining satisfaction from customers.
This is an independent tour operation
company which provides variety of
package holiday within the confines
of UK. Other types of services that are
rendered by this corporation are
inclusive of camping,
accommodation, travelling, food etc.
Price Thomas Cook offers the holiday and
corporate packages at moderate prices in
order to gain the attention of and make it
appealing to all economic sections of
society. This travel and tourism company
offers seasonal discount to clients so as to
enhance its reach and as a result, its sales
volume.
This organisation offers budget
friendly vacations making it easily
affordable for even middle and lower
class sections of society. It makes use
of low pricing strategy as this aids
them to appeal to a larger base of
audience.
Place Thomas Cook operates in online as well
as offline format. Customers can easily
avail the details of tour packages from
company's website or their brick and
mortar style stores.
This entity operates in online format.
People can avail information about
their tour offers from their website
and select the one in accordance with
their preferences and demand.
Promotion Thomas Cook carries out promotion of its
offerings by way of print media
(magazines, newspaper, hoardings),
broadcast media (television, radio) and
internet (website). This corporation
promotes its offerings under a variety of
themes like group tours, adventure
holiday, honeymoon special etc.
This tourism company promotes its
offerings via social media, television
and YouTube. Also, details of the tour
packages is available over the official
website of company.
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Physical
Evidence
This entity is present within 16 countries.
The services offered by the entity and the
satisfaction gained by clients as a result
act as physical evidence. Further, it has
outlets spread across the globe so as to
make it easily accessible for people.
The official website of this
corporation providing information
about its various tour packages serves
as the physical evidence.
People Thomas Cook comprises of trained staff
of 3000 employees who work hard with a
view to align the services offered by
entity with the industry standards.
Cosmos Holidays consists of effective
digital marketing team who keep on
updating the travel packages on
company's website and social media
pages.
Process Thomas Cook carries out a number of
marketing activities like promotional
campaigns, advertising etc. Alterations
within the services are brought in
accordance with the situations prevailing
in market place.
This entity carries out online
promotion of its offerings to reach out
to large number of persons. Clients
after the booking of tour packages can
relish the travel experiences.
LO 3
P4. Marketing Plan
Marketing plan can be referred to as the systematic manner in which the marketing
strategy is unfolded by an organisation to attain its marketing objective. Thomas Cook is
considering to launch a mobile application whereby the customers can do customisation within
the tour packages as per their preference and convenience. To effectively launch this app, the
organisation has come up with a marketing plan stipulated as follows:-
Overview
Thomas Cook Group is a UK based tourism organisation. It is planning to launch a
mobile application which gives customer the chance to modify the features of tour packages as
per their accord.
Mission
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“To offer high quality services to customers to gain maximum satisfaction from them.”
Vision
“To become the leading organisation within travel and tourism sector across the globe”
Objectives
The marketing objectives stipulated by Thomas Cook in relation to the launch of new
mobile app is as follows:-
“To enhance the market share of entity by 15% by the end of 1 year with the launch of
new mobile application.”
STP Model
This is a strategic and analytical model used by business organisations with a view to
effectively reach out to its target audience and position its offerings within them. It consists of 3
stages, namely, segmentation, targeting and positioning. Thomas Cook has positioned its
services within the people by making use of this model, as follows:-
Segmentation: Thomas Cook does the segmentation of market on the basis of
demographics. The aspect of demographics which is considered by the company while
segmenting the market is age group.
Targeting: Thomas Cook targets people who possess likelihood towards travelling and
adventure, thus seeking to explore new locations. It usually targets youths and recently married
couples.
Positioning: Thomas Cook will position its offerings within the public by making use of
social media marketing through which it can gain the attention of large base of audience.
SWOT Analysis
This is a strategical model which provides aid to a corporation to gain knowledge of the
internal aspects pertaining to the entity. Following is the SWOT analysis of Thomas Cook:-
Strengths Weaknesses
This is the largest travel and tour company
within the confines of UK. It offers the option
of customisation over the new mobile
application which will further inflate its sales
and profits.
Owing to the continuous growth of rivalry
within the tourism sector, this entity has
limited market share. To deal with this, the
enterprise is coming up with the new mobile
application.
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Opportunities Threats
It has the opportunity to inflate its profits and
revenues by expanding its service portfolio.
The biggest threat for the company is the
presence of large number of rivals within the
market.
Budget
MARKETING BUDGET (£)
PARTICULARS I Year II Year III Year IV Year V Year
Initial money 4500 7500 13000 15300 18700
Investment 9500 10200 23500 31200 13500
TOTAL 14000 17700 38500 46500 32200
MARKETING OUTLAY
Promotion 5600 2500 5500 2900 2200
Sales publicity 1300 750 2400 1450 1150
Direct selling 2200 1700 4700 1100 4200
TOTAL 9100 4950 12600 5450 7550
Monitoring and Controlling
This stage of marketing plan involves the examination of all the stages of plan in order to
ascertain whether the objective stipulated at the beginning is attained or not. Thomas Cook
monitors as well as controls its activities with a view to ensure least deviation between desired
and actual output. The ending stage of marketing plan is aimed at making sure that the launch of
mobile application for the tourism company takes place in accordance with the planning done by
entity.
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CONCLUSION
It is concluded that marketing is an essential component of an entity as it helps the
corporation in reaching its target audience and persuading them to make a purchase. This
business unit holds a number of roles and responsibilities such as development of marketing
campaigns, marketing strategy and conduction of marketing research. It is also acknowledged
that marketing departments works in coordination with other business functions in order to
facilitate smooth flow of business operations. Further, it is acknowledged that marketing mix and
marketing plan are essentially utilised by companies to successfully launch the new product
within the market.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Camilleri, M. A., 2018. the tourism industry: An overview. In Travel marketing, tourism
economics and the airline product(pp. 3-27). Springer, Cham.
Cifci, M. A., Cetin, G. and Dincer, F. I., 2018. Marketing tourism experiences. In The Routledge
Handbook of Destination Marketing (pp. 49-59). Routledge.
De Mooij, M., 2019. Consumer behavior and culture: Consequences for global marketing and
advertising. SAGE Publications Limited.
Goldberg, M. E., Fishbein, M. and Middlestadt, S. E., 2018. Social marketing: Theoretical and
practical perspectives. Psychology Press.
Gupta, G., 2019. Inclusive Use of Digital Marketing in Tourism Industry. In Information Systems
Design and Intelligent Applications (pp. 411-419). Springer, Singapore.
Haider, A. A. and et. al., 2019. Marketing Management.
Kingsnorth, S., 2019. Digital marketing strategy: an integrated approach to online marketing.
Kogan Page Publishers.
Steinhoff, L. and et. al, 2019. Online relationship marketing. Journal of the Academy of
Marketing Science, 47(3), pp.369-393.
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