Destination Marketing Analysis: Principles, Campaigns, and DMOs

This report delves into the multifaceted world of destination marketing, examining the core principles that underpin effective strategies. It begins by evaluating marketing planning principles, supported by examples like Hays Travel, and explores how these principles are applied to promote destinations. The report then analyzes key elements of successful destination marketing campaigns, using case studies such as Visit Britain and the Faroe Islands to assess how objectives are met. It also reviews the application of digital marketing tools and examines the role and services of Destination Marketing Organizations (DMOs). Finally, the report assesses the challenges DMOs face, providing real-world examples and offering insights into overcoming these obstacles. The report aims to provide a comprehensive overview of destination marketing, offering valuable insights for students and professionals in the field.

Destination marketing

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................1
P1 Evaluation of principles of marketing planning which support the marketing of a
destination using specific destination examples.........................................................................1
P2 Analyse the key elements of a range of destination marketing campaign examples to
analyse how successfully campaign objectives were met...........................................................2
P3 Review the different digital marketing tools used for promoting and advertising a specific
destination...................................................................................................................................4
P4 Examine the role and services of DMOs in marketing a destination.....................................5
P5 Assess the challenges faced by DMOs in marketing destinations using a range of examples
.....................................................................................................................................................6
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................8
References:.......................................................................................................................................9

INTRODUCTION
Destination marketing is a marketing type where a particular destination or location is
targeted for attracting customers toward the company. It consists of attracting and analysing the
location. It is mainly used in hospitality sectors where number of customers is increased by
attracting their attention toward specific location by telling them good things about the location
(Marasco and et. al., 2018). Hays Travel is the biggest travel agency in UK which is founded in
1980 by John Hays. It is headquartered in Sunderland, England, UK. The following file covers
evaluation of principles of marketing planning which support the marketing of a destination
using specific destination examples, analysing the key elements of a range of destination
marketing campaign examples to analyse how successfully campaign objectives were met,
reviewing the different digital marketing tools used for promoting and advertising a specific
destination, examine the role and services of DMOs in marketing a destination and assess the
challenges faced by DMOs in marketing destinations using a range of examples.
MAIN BODY
P1 Evaluation of principles of marketing planning which support the marketing of a destination
using specific destination examples
Company Overview-
Mission- Hay’s Travel’s mission is to become most profitable and known privately owned
Travel Company by giving their best facilities to their customers and suppliers.
Vision- Their vision is to become world famous travel company by gaining reputation whi9ch
they must create by their better facilities.
SMART Objectives- Their objectives are-
 To promote their company and their services at worldwide level.
 To gain at least 10 % more customers every year.
 To focus on promotional activities and gain the attraction of more travellers at the time of
weekends.
 To earn more profit than last year.
Marketing is the main activity of attracting customers toward a brand, company, product or
services. It involves all those activities which promote offerings of a company. In context a
travel agency promote location then it is called destination marketing. This is the marketing
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which is commonly used in hospitality sector to promote the tourism of a particular destination.
In destination marketing, travel agencies aware their customers about advantages of staying in a
particular place through online, advertisements, newspaper adds, pamphlets and many other
sources (Bastiaansen and et. al., 2018). They provide all those information which grab the
attention of customers like climate, whether, popular places for entertainment and many more.
Few principles of marketing planning which support a marketing of destination are mentioned
below- Product- This component describe the features and characteristics of a location in context
of destination marketing that why and for what reasons the particular place is famous for
and why will tourism should reach the destination for spending their holidays. In context
of Hays travel, they promote UK places for develop tourism industry in UK. They convey
a useful and essential information about the place that what all places are famous to stay
in UK. It also covers famous food to eat, famous parks, museum and kids zone for
entrainment. In context of Royal Museums Greenwich, it is necessary to tell why and
what are the good things about this place. Price- It reflects the monetary value for particular service or product which is paid by
customer to company (Kozak and Buhalis, 2019). In destination marketing prices plays
an important role by telling customers that what all monetary values they have to pay for
using particular services. It is basically answers that how much budget is required to stay
for particular period of time. It states charger of every service like dinner charges, spa
charges, taxi charges per km and many others. It is important to suggest low prices and
offer high services to attract a good amount of tourism toward a destination. In context of
Royal Museum Greenwich, this segment covers what all prices will be charged to have
the facility of this museum. Place- It covers the information of how a traveller can reach to particular destination.
This is the most important factor in marketing mix to explain traveller lovers that how
and what is the best time to reach at their most liked destination. In context of Hays
travel, they mention all transport facilities like flights and boats details in their
promotional activities to aware people that they will not face any issue to reach at their
destination. In context of Royal Museum Greenwich, they offer a its the museum which
has ship shape to attract tourist.
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 Promotion- It tells that how a company promote its famous places for travel in tourism
sector (Seyfi and Hall, 2020). In context of Hays travels, they promote famous places by
their social media account. They upload pictures and videos of famous places and
attractive offerings to gain travel lovers attentions. They also offer some discountable
offering to their regular travellers. It consists of aware travellers about new services of a
destination. It is suggested for Hays Travel to have a specific department which handle
the activity of promoting famous places of UK.
P2 Analyse the key elements of a range of destination marketing campaign examples to analyse
how successfully campaign objectives were met
Destination marketing is essential to promote a location and attract tourist to spend their
holidays in that particular places. In context of UK, Hays Travel is a travel agency which attract
tourists toward famous places of UK like Royal Museum Greenwich which is having overall 4
set of museums, Tate modern, Warwich Castle and many more. Few elements to analyse
campaign for success are explained below-
Define target audience- It involves identifying travel lovers who wish to spend their
weekend to travel at famous places to have entertainment. In context of Hays Travels they
always keep records of their customers who travel previously and send them about new offerings
to them. It is very essential to define target audience and this target audience are those who is
having very strong interest in travelling the world. UK identifies their tourist from other
countries as well as from their own countries but most of their audience are from Asian
countries.
Establish goals- It describe setting a goal that how and at what time they offer their
services or start promoting to influence tourists to grab their attention(Stankov and et. al., 2019).
It is very important in travel industry that goals must be set which consist fix time, targeted
customers, targeted destinations and many more. In context of Hays Travel, the start promoting
and attracting customers attention toward their Royal Museum Greenwich, when there is a big
exhibition conducted.
Define budget- This element covers how much budget should be offered to customer so
that they will agree to reach at destination. Budgets must be set according to income of travellers.
It is suggested for Hays Travels to make budget for all income customers whether the services
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may reduce but offering must be offer to whole section of travellers. Budget must be set and
offered to customers in such a way that traveller will not get confuse and it should be presented
in a tabular form and must contain each and every price from arrival of tourist to going back of
travellers to their respective counties. It must be focused by travel agencies that the amount or
budget which they are making, under this budget only traveller enjoys all facilities. No extra
charges should be charged by customers.
Formulate target context- After all the above steps it is compulsory to offer and explain
all facilities to traveller that what and how the set budget is suitable for them what all
destinations they are going to visit and other facilities. Having proper communication with
clients makes it easy to develop tourism in UK.
Engage with audience- It is a good strategy to engage with audience which help to make
good relationship with audience by telling them real positive story of selected destination or
sharing a personal experience from another customer (Hanna and et. al., 2018). Strongest way is
to communicate with audience in a very polite way and making them believe that they are
travelling to right place without any danger.
Example of destination marketing campaigns-
 Visit Britain GREAT campaign- It began in 2011 and mainly focused on promoting
culture, sports, popular places, famous foods and many more of Britain to grab the
attention of travellers. In the year 2018 it launches 'I travel for' campaign to 'shine the
spotlight on unexpected experiences and less-explored destinations in Britain, alongside
its globally renowned and iconic landmarks and attractions.” Initially this campaign
promotes whole UK places for its promotion. Due to the Act 1969, mentioned campaign
promotes only Great Britain rather than whole world. It was worked as merger between
British Tourism Authority and English Tourism Council. After few years of its beginning
this merger gets closed and both authorities worked separately. Their mission is to
increase the volume of tourism inbound across the Britain and to enhance world- class
English tourism product to support growth. They achieve their objectives by focusing and
promoting their campaign to those people who are interested in Britain to spend their
holidays.
 Colour of Carlsbad- It is the campaign of California with the campaign “colours of
Carlsbad “. They analyse 4 specific colours that make images more attractive and perfect
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for travellers and destinations. They use social media for getting popularity among
worldwide and it also helps to gain the attention of travellers toward their destination.
Their main objective is to make Carlsbad (city in California) the hottest destination for
those tourists who love Insta-worthy images. Their best service is that they provide some
amazing pictures of destinations as well as tourists to post on social media. They secure
their presence with the most attractive offerings for social media feeds for travellers.
They offer Carlsbad’s sandy beaches, green hills, blue oceans, floral fields and electric
urban environment. That why they are called colour of Carlsbad because their
destinations are totally different and full of different colours like blue oceans, green hills
and many others. To achieve their objective they choose to promote their campaign
through social media because they believe that social media is a wide range of medium
which help them to reach many customers worldwide.
 The faroe Island- It is a gorgeous and beautiful archipelago located in between two
popular tourist locations which is Scotland and Iceland. They have “bird's- eye- view'
from where tourist can see both destination. From their many ideas like this they attract
more than 49,000 travellers at their destination. This destination is famous for “Sheep
View 360”. Many of the best destinations of this Island has no roads, therefore this
campaign found the solution and the solution for this issue is that they have fixed solar-
powered 360 degree camera on adventurous sheep. To achieve their objectives they
started Camera record video like where ever sheep move the head and it also take a
picture clicked after every 1 minute. This is an amazing idea to attract tourists.
 Visit Portugal- It is the campaign made for increasing tourism sector in Portugal. Due to
some unwanted happening in the country their tourism sector falls down. “It’s time to
stop” is the name of their campaign which display charming scenes in two minute video
which inspire travellers to visit Portugal. In this campaign, visitors are attracted by videos
and pictures of their famous and beautiful destinations which are shared on social media
as well as personally to visitors on their wish. Some wonderful destinations in Portugal
are Lisbon, Porto, Ericeira, Algarve, Sintra and many others. Portugal is a small country.
Hence, it is unknown to many of tourists that they are also having some beautiful and
peaceful places to travel and enjoy their weekend. This campaign worked to aware
tourists about their destinations. To achieve their objective they worked to promote their
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campaign in other countries as well as in their country also to tell their citizens about the
importance and beauty of their own place. They have a team who reach place to place to
promote their campaign.
P3 Review the different digital marketing tools used for promoting and advertising a specific
destination
There are various marketing tools which are used many companies for promoting and
advertising specific destination so that their customer will attract more and there business
expands rapidly. Few techniques are explained below-
Content marketing Social Media Marketing
Content marketing is that marketing which is
creating valuable, relevant and consistent
content. The main aim of this marketing is to
attract customer attention by providing them
real and true data. It helps to develop brand
awareness among customers by promoting
their merchandise on websites, blogs, articles
and many others (Önder, Gunter and Gindl,
2020). In simple words content marketing
consist of sharing of real experience of
customers or employees related to company
and brand. Most of the companies use this tool
to make believe their customers those other
customers who is having same category like
them have positive experience to buy and use
the particular product. This help in influencing
other customers that if others are getting profit
by purchasing the product then why not we
will gain the same benefit.
Social media marketing involve the platform of
sharing content on social media like Instagram,
Facebook and many others. As today most of
the generation are active on social media so its
a good idea to promote products on social
media. In context of destination marketing,
most of the tourist first reaches to social media
account of specific location or country to know
all details about destination. Posting pictures
and videos of famous locations is a good idea
to have customer attention. Hence, it is
recommended to Hays Travels to make their
own social media account and share beautiful
and adventitious pictures and videos of
particular attractive site to encourage tourists to
visit the location (Joyner and et. al., 2018).
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Digital marketing campaigns of UK-
 Visitbritain- the Great Campaign- This campaign is to promote the destination of Britain
and attract many travellers to visit Britain. They have their social media account on
Instagram and Facebook where they promote their campaign by sharing UK culture,
dancing videos, singing and enjoyment videos and many others.
 Westjet Christmas miracle- In 2013, Canadian Airline launches this campaign of
enjoying the Christmas period, to grant passenger their Christmas wishes through a live
digital stream to Santa. Here, this campaign uses digital way to distract passengers and air
hostess at flight quickly wrapped the gifts of their passengers wishes to give present to
them and thanking them to visit at their destination.
 Thomas Cook- Try before you buy- This is the world famous campaign for using virtual
digital way to give experience to their customers that how exactly the destination looks.
Here, this campaign provides a real like look of destination to customers for 5 minutes so
that they will decide that they like or dislike the destination.
P4 Examine the role and services of DMOs in marketing a destination
Destination management organisations (DMOs) plays various roles in long term
development of a destination by applying effective strategies to attract tourist forward their
destination. DMOs act as gateway to the destination for visitors. Their main purpose is to
provide most useful information to tourist. Few roles of DMO's are explained below-
Market research- It involves to identify targeted customers, their needs and wants, to
know behaviour and spending habit of their customers and many others. DMO's main role is to
conduct a marketing research and analyse how a particular tourist get satisfied and what type of
destination a tourist is looking for spending their holidays.
Conducting marketing campaigns- DMOs have another role and that is conducting
marketing campaigns. This is done after analysing marketing conditions by marketing research.
Marketing campaigns are done to aware more customers at a same time by conveying message to
whole group by conducting some activities like promoting on social media and many others (Ben
Youssef, Leicht and Marongiu, 2019). Campaigns are done for various reasons like for brand
awareness, product launch campaign, content marketing campaign and many others. They are
done to aware customers about the services and products and to analyse that how effectively they
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are conducting their campaigns to attract customers and in case they found any unsuccessful
strategy in this activity then they are supposed to modify or even change the whole way of
conducting campaigns. Hence, DMO's are also engage in conducting campaigns.
Making effective marketing plans- Another important role of DMO's is to make
effective marketing plan for destination marketing. It includes making plan about how and when
to provide information to customers, what all strategies is require attract more customers, what
are the main activities require to compete with competitors and many more. DMO's make
marketing plan and pass the plan to other departments for further implementation of strategic
plan. Their main area which covers major part of their planning process is how to increase
customer awareness about a destination and how to make belief their targeted customers that
their offered destination review is best among others. It can be done by providing best facilities
to their tourists.
Clearing doubts of customers- Another main role of such organisations is to listen
properly what their customers is saying and clearing their doubts about the offered destination
services (Lyu, Huang and Mao, 2021). In most of the cases customers make predictions that
offered destinations are not safe for them or having some unwanted activities. In this case DMO's
is required to give appropriate proof to their customers and clearing their all doubts about
particular location. Passing true and useful information is one the main role of DMO's.
The effect of Covid Pandemic on DMO’s and how they deal with them-
This pandemic affected every kind of Travel Company and some are explained below-
 ACE cultural tours- This DMO provides tour in UK, Europe and across the globe. They
provide their tours in group wise and they basically choose festival days of different
countries to allow best facilities to their travellers. Due to Covid 19 very few festivals are
celebrated as publicly on public places and due to this ACE cultural tours are unable to
show the cultures of different countries to their travellers. They are even facing issues to
promote their organisation.
P5 Assess the challenges faced by DMOs in marketing destinations using a range of examples
DMO's plays various roles and due to their dynamic and multitasking feature they have to
face many problems too. Problems and challenges are created at any time to make a big obstacle
for performing their task. It is necessary to solve all the issues on time for DMO's smooth
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functioning. Some of the key challenges and issues faced by Destination Management
Organisations and their suggested solutions are explained below-
Analysing customer behaviour and attitude- The biggest challenge for DMO is to
identify customer behaviour and attitude because this are those factors which did not stay same
for a long time. Behaviour and attitude of customers has a dynamic nature which means it
changes continuously (Tung, Lee and Hudson, 2019). Hence, in marketing research DMO's face
many problems and when they analyse customer needs and want clearly and tries to offer some
services about destination according to their needs and wants at some time their behaviour
changes and they plan some other destination which is totally different from their previous
wants. Hence, dynamic behaviour of customers is biggest challenge for DMO's to perform their
task effectively. It is suggested for the Hays Travels which is a DMO of UK to overcome by this
issue by conducting all activities like analysing customer behaviour and giving offers and
making them influenced toward their offered destination and many others all this activities must
be done in a short period of time. Company should not give time to customer to change their
mind for another destination.
Threat from natural calamities- Natural calamities is those disasters which occur
naturally and there is no control over these calamities. Some natural calamities are Earthquakes,
Flood, Storm, Tsunami and many others (Zhang, Cheung and Law, 2018). For planning a
holiday spending in some adventurous destination, first thing which comes in customer mind is
that the location is safe from natural calamities or not. UK is facing problems from storm most of
the time. Hence, it is difficult for them to make belief to their customers that they are safe from
any kind of natural disasters. In case of sudden occurrence of any kind of natural calamities at
companies offered destination creates bad impact upon customers mind about the destination as
well as upon company to not aware their customers for such calamities. To overcome this
problem, Hays Travels are required to promote only those destinations where the occurrence of
natural disasters is very low or equal to zero percent. Offering any destination facilities to
customers, company is require to analyse from whether report that what's the date and time of
any occurrence of any natural calamity and further not accepting booking of tourists at that time
period. Honesty for customer’s safety is one of the best reasons for the growth of DMO's.
Competitors and their strategies- Today most of people are like to have a world tour
with their families and due to increasing in number of demands, more and more companies are
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establish in destination marketing industry. Hence, overall number of customer’s increases day
by day in this industry and new companies enter the market with some best strategies which
impacts upon old or already existed companies (Bausch and Unseld, 2018). DMO's are engage
with many competitors hence it’s a big challenge for Hays Travels to compete with their tough
competitors like Btours.com, Escape2Holidays and Class Adventure Travel. Therefore, to
overcome such obstacles the Hays Travels is requiring to analyse their competitor’s strategy very
carefully and then adopt those strategy which they think will provide benefit to their business.
They are required to hire experienced and well knowledgeable employees for making and
implementing competitive strategies to compete well in market.
CONCLUSION
From the above information it is clear that destination marketing plays important role in
increasing and developing tourism sector of any country. Product, place, price and promotion are
the factors which must be determined and make better strategies to offer destination facilities to
tourists on these factors to effectively attract more customers. Destination marketing campaigns
are made to aware more customers by providing them true and useful information. Content
marketing and social media marketing are some of the digital marketing tools to promote a
particular destination. Content marketing is a marketing type where the company share real and
actual facts about the destination. Here, companies share experience and reviews of customers
through articles, pictures, videos, blogs and many more. On the other hand social media
marketing is a marketing tool which is consist a perfect platform to share all contents of
destination to attract more customers because most of the people are active on social media like
Instagram, Facebook and etc. They get more attracted toward the information provided on social
media platforms. DMO's are the organisations which manage destinations tours of various clients
by offering them advantages of many locations. They play many roles like conducting market
research, making effective marketing plans, conducting marketing campaigns and many others.
DMO's has to face many issues like analysing tourist’s behaviour and attitude, threat from
natural calamities and many others.
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