Marketing Plan for Cairns Aquarium: Strategy & Communications

This report presents a comprehensive marketing plan for Cairns Aquarium in Australia, a popular tourist destination. It includes a situation analysis, evaluating the internal and external environments through internal analysis, PESTLE, customer analysis, and industry analysis using Porter's Five ...Read More

Running head: MARKETING MANAGEMENT AND DIGITAL COMMUNICATIONS
Marketing management and digital communications
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Executive summary
The subsequent report deals with the marketing plan of Cairns Aquarium of Australia.
The aquarium is a well-known tourist spot and thousands of visitors are garnered in this spot.
However, in order to further increase the success rate of the tourist spot a well thought out
marketing is discussed below. The following report establishes the key strengths and
weaknesses of the organisation and accordingly strategic planning is established.
A marketing mix is even established for determining the key areas where the
organisation could expand. The below report provides an in-depth analysis of the internal
external environment of the industry and then accordingly plan out strategies that helps in
accelerating the profit and sales of the organisation. An estimated budget is prepared for
giving a general idea about the approximate expenditures.

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Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................3
Situation Analysis......................................................................................................................4
Internal analysis.....................................................................................................................4
PESTLE (External Analysis).................................................................................................5
Customer Analysis.................................................................................................................6
Industry Analysis...................................................................................................................6
SWOT Analysis.........................................................................................................................8
Marketing objectives..............................................................................................................9
Marketing Mix decisions......................................................................................................10
Budget......................................................................................................................................11
Conclusion................................................................................................................................12
References................................................................................................................................13

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Introduction
Cairns Aquarium is one of the well-recognised tourist spot in Australia that thousands
of visitors admire. The organisation provides a venue for thousands of tourists to admire the
nature’s beautiful underwater creations however, also try to facilitate and educate the people
to conserve and preserve the natural habitat of the underwater creatures. Therefore, the
aquarium has a vision of inspiring and motivating people across the globe to value, preserve
and conserve the Great Barrier Reef and the Queensland Tropical rainforest ("Aquarium
Tropical Queensland", 2018).
The organisation’s main mission statement is share the knowledge regarding the
conservation of aquatic natural habitat and disseminate information and knowledge to every
visitor of the tourist spot focusing on the diversity of the Tropical North Queensland’s natural
habitat. Hence, apart from delivering a spot for tourists to admire the nature’s wondrous
species, the organisation offers educational programmes that facilitates the diversified nature
of ecological environment.
In order to further promote the tourist spot and increase its popularity, an analysis is
conducted. The tourist spot as such have a great scope to expand its popularity by adopting
certain strategies. However, an in-depth analysis of the organisation is essential before
implementing those strategies into function. In the below report the situational analysis is
conducted upon the Cairns Aquarium along with SWOT analysis of the organisation that
would help to draw out the key marketing objectives for the organisation and identify the
suitable marketing strategy.
Situation Analysis
For the purpose of implementing the most appropriate marketing strategy it is
essential to do a thorough research of the internal environment that would affect upon the

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effectiveness of the organisation (Boons & Lüdeke-Freund, 2013). Cairns Aquarium delivers
an extensive service of providing its consumers a magnificent experience of underwater
adventure along with giving an insight of the ways to preserve this natural habitat.
Internal analysis
Cairns Aquarium is one of the well-known tourist spot in Australia therefore, its
popularity is one of the key strengths that attracts many visitors towards the venue. Apart
from this, the organisation offers an extensive educational programmes that aims in
facilitating the conservation of the Great Barrier Reef and the Tropical rainforest, this
initiative earns them a good reputation in the eye of the consumers and other potential
investors (Authority, 2017). Adding to this, the organisation takes an initiative in promoting
the diversified habitat of the ecological environment, this adds a value in the image of the
organisation.
The annual number of visitors of Cairns Aquarium is approximately 1000000 and
more (Salas, 2016). The organisation within its one year of opening have garnered an
impressive amount of visitors and thus, is one of the strengths of the organisation. In fact a
part of funding for the organisation comes from the Federal Government Tourism Industry
Regional Development Fund (Tsuji et al., 2015). The organisation since its establishment has
also had the support of the local communities that works in favour of the organisation. The
establishment of Cairns Aquarium opened up more than 600 job roles and additionally
collaborating with local hotel chains and other businesses (McCarty, Ceci & Streb, 2017).
Therefore establishing a good relationship and reputation from the local communities.
PESTLE (External Analysis)
Political – The Cairns Aquarium receive immense amount of support from the government.
However, the imposition of tax and other fiscal policy on tourism industry may affect the

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organisation. The amendments made by the ruling political party may also influence the
functioning of the organisation.
Economic – The inflation rate of Australia in recent year have increased up to 1.9 percent
therefore, this would impact upon the organisation’s pricing their services and products that
they offer to consumers.
Social – It has been observed that the current society are more inclined towards recreational
activities therefore, the organisation offering adventurous tourist spot is an advantage for its
growth. In addition to this, the majority of population are engaged in tourist spot offering
such recreational activity. Therefore, Cairns Aquarium is greatly influenced by social
environment.
Technological – The advancement in technology have given rise to an extensive growth in
tourism industry. Therefore, the Cairns Aquarium is heavily influenced by technological
factors.
Legal – The consumer laws and safety laws of employee set up by the government affects the
organisation structure and functions. The Cairns Aquarium have to adopt strict safety
measures for employees as per the standards set by safety law.
Environmental – This includes all the factors that affect the business environment of Cairns.
The favourable location upon which the Cairns Aquarium is located affects upon the rate of
profit of the organisation. Along with the number of tourists visiting the tourist spot is an
advantage for Cairns Aquarium.
Customer Analysis
It has been observed that since its opening that the tourist spot have able to garner an
impressive amount of visitors. The aquarium was inaugurated in the year 2017 and by the end

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of the year the annual number of visitors was approximately 1000000 (Squire & BBltEnv,
2017). In addition to this, the Cairns area is evident to be having an increased amount of
visitors from the countries such as China, Japan and so on. Therefore, the Cairns Aquarium
have a potential amount of international visitors from the above mentioned countries
(Anderson & Prideaux, 2015).
It is even noticed that the tourist spot mainly targets the whole family visitors with
their convenient service. The aquarium has features that enables the family to enjoy and also
get entertained with the adventurous tour of Great Barrier Reef and Tropical rainforest.
Industry Analysis
It is significant to determine the position of an organisation in the competitive market
(Baker, 2016). Therefore, with the help of industry analysis the Cairns Aquarium would be
able to identify its position among other organisations that deals with similar industry. Taking
into the model of Porter’s Five Forces the potential areas of profit can be determined and
ultimately channel the organisation towards the road to success (E. Dobbs, 2014).
 Competitive rivalry (High) – The Cairns Aquarium, since its opening has been able
to garner an impressive amount of visitors. However, the organisation faces tough
competition from its competing organisations such as Sea Life Sydney, the Aquarium
of Western Australia and so on.
 Bargaining power of suppliers (Moderate) – Since the Cairns Aquarium have a
good amount of support from its local communities and establishes a healthy
relationship with other operators, the power suppliers for the organisation is moderate.
In addition to this, Australia has a high number of suppliers that contribute to this
industry therefore, the organisation does not find difficulty in choosing its suitable
supplier.

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 Bargaining power of customers (High) – It has been observed that in order to attract
customers towards the tourist spot the organisation takes the initiative of offering
discounts and gift vouchers. It is significant to understand that the number of
competitors of market increases the bargaining power of the customer from a selective
organisation (Töytäri, Rajala & Alejandro, 2015). The reason behind this is that the
consumers have plenty of option to choose from and thus is not bound with a singular
option.
 Threat of new entrants (Low) – The potential of a new competitor in the market is
relatively low since, there are no major new entries in the specific industry that would
be a threat for the organisation. However, the prior existing competitors poses a major
threat for Cairns Aquarium.
 Threat of substitute services (High) – The power of substitute services is high for
the Cairns Aquarium. The availability of other tourist spots are extensive and
numerous in number. Australia as a result of its favourable location is blessed with
natural environment and the nation has taken up good advantage of it by maintaining
and establishing distinctive tourist spots (Crotti & Misrahi, 2015). Hence, the Cairns
Aquarium have major threats from other tourist spots spread across the nation.
SWOT Analysis
It is essential for an organisation to run a SWOT analysis for identifying the strengths,
weaknesses, opportunities and threats that it holds and the accordingly make a strategic
planning for enhancing the organisations potential towards achieving success (Vladi, 2014).
Below, is the SWOT analysis of Cairns Aquarium –
 Strengths – The Cairns Aquarium since its establishment have been extremely
popular as a result of its variety of features that it offers to the tourists. The popularity

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of the tourist spot is one of the key strengths that work in favour for the organisation.
In addition to this, the organisation have a majority amount of support from the local
communities this enables the organisation to flourish without popularity any obstacle.
The organisation even have a majority of support from the government which is one
of the strengths of the organisation.
 Weaknesses – The organisation have recently suffered from an accident that hampers
the reputation of the tourist spot. The security measures along with emergency staff
members are comparatively less.
 Opportunities – Since the organisation is a newly established tourist spot it has a lot
of scope of expanding and flourishing in the market. The organisation have the ability
to open up new sections within its enormous infrastructure that could attract even
more tourists to the venue.
 Threats – The key threat that the organisation faces is from the extensive number of
competitors that are in majority number. Additionally, the organisation may suffer
from losing its customers to other popular tourist spots that are found extensively in
Australia.
Marketing objectives
 The main marketing objectives of Cairns Aquarium to provide sustainable business
practices for the sake of the customers.
 To conserve the animals and plants that live in two adjoining World Heritage areas,
the Great Barrier Reef and the Wet Tropic by promoting them amongst diverse
audience,
 The Cairns Aquarium team intends to facilitate a culture of sustainability that assists
conservation objectives through promotion and advertisement for the organisation
thereby developing a strong legacy of environmental policy (Pettigrew et al., 2015).

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 The Cairns Aquarium is also dedicated towards the development and implementation
of marketing policies and partnership program that incorporates environmental
concerned practices in to the organisations regular operations by conveying message
of conservation through promotion.
Marketing strategies
 Developing healthy relationship with consumers by which the company can develop
attack record and reference sources of the customers.
 Through word of mouth by carefully selection additional resources will be serving
high quality marketing services.
 Community engagement by developing physical brand presence in major markets
using different brand ambassadors, event sponsorship through leadership (Deans et
al., 2016).
 Public relations will be developed by strengthening domestic and national media
relations for increasing the awareness of Cairns Aquarium and marketing events. It
can be done to introduce the mission of the organisation to advance the organisational
presence and relevancy through media promotion surrounding a broader variety of
aquatic issues (Soosay et al., 2016).
 Advertising can be done through analytics based initiative to conduct traditional form
of advertising. By doing so, the company will be able to expand the promotion
message to create Cairns Aquarium destination for entertainment.
 The organisation needs to create sea events on a yearly basis committed with a visitor
and customer oriented promotions that can be used as per requirement (Deans et al.,
2016). This process will be start by targeting existing successful marketing events
such seals on the Rocks, penguin run, Halloween and many more sea events.

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 The company can utilise the major marketing techniques using expertise services and
social media to involve customers in a two way interactions.
 The company is required to refine their marketing efforts to address main
demographic changes with a specific emphasis on attracting expanded presence of the
young Asian and Australian communities.
 The company is required to collect and evaluate market research on a continuous
basis including existing system of ticketing for efficiently understanding and respond
to changing patterns and trends (Armstrong et al., 2014).
Marketing Mix decisions
Products
Cairns aquarium will be needed to provide services for managing saltwater aquariums for the
customers by cleaning and maintaining the Aquarium. Their Aquarium is needed to be
conserved with aquatic coral reefs and fish of different variety. The company will be focusing
on salt water tanks as it has additional features such as colours, visuals and ability to improve
the official appearance (Soosay et al., 2016). By doing so, the major goal of the organisation
will be help the customers to understand the importance of coral reef and friendly inhabitants.
Price
The company needs to set a reasonable and affordable prices on the equipment’s, supplies
and inhabitants. In this context, the company will be customising an aquarium budgets by
allowing the customers decide over the type of fish they want (Ruhanen, Whitford &
McLennan, 2015). They also will be offering discounts on the online booking services to
attract increased number of customers.
Promotion

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The promotion will be done through aqua sustainability programs and events by creating
awareness through public relations and social media promotions. The company will be
posting attractive programs on social media sites to attract more and more customers.
People
Cairns Aquarium needs to pay increased attention to the millennial generational and their
interest in social caused. During the lifecycle of the marketing plan these millennial will
become the major consumers (Dwyer et al., 2014). Having a markedly different and activist
of the role of aquarium as conservation entities is a critical step towards involving the
customers.
Budget
It has been observed from the above analysis that the organisation to promote the
tourist spot on an extensive level have to adopt promotional strategies (Pike & Page, 2014).
The funding for the promotion of the tourist spot will require a hefty amount of
approximately $5000000.
This would be an initiative to accelerate the sales of the organisation. Apart from this,
the organisation plans to add new sections into the infrastructure for the process of expansion.
An approximate budget of $10 million is estimated for fulfilling the above mentioned
strategical planning.
Conclusion
Therefore, it can be concluded that the above report thoroughly examines the key
areas where the organisation can expand in order to improve their sales and establish their
prominence in the competitive market. With the help of situational analysis the organisation
was able to bring out the potential target market where it can focus their business. Apart from

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these, the industry analysis helped the organisation identify the key forces and determine the
position of the organisation in the competitive environment. Furthermore, the SWOT analysis
conducted on the organisation helped enumerate the key strengths that are the popularity of
the organisation, great infrastructure, the support from local communities and government
funding. The analysis helped the organisation to establish the appropriate marketing plan that
would help to enhance the organisation’s profit.

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