Thomas Cook's Marketing Strategy: Issues in Product, Price & Place

This essay examines the marketing mix elements—product, price, and place—and the challenges Thomas Cook faced in its summer 2017 holiday offerings to Morocco and Egypt. It discusses the intangible nature of Thomas Cook's services and how this impacts customer perception and pricing strategies. The essay also highlights the importance of selecting attractive and safe destinations, as well as the role of promotional activities and local communities in enhancing the tourism experience. Furthermore, it explores the concept of the total tourism product, emphasizing how elements like accommodation, entertainment, and cultural experiences contribute to customer satisfaction and influence future travel decisions, ultimately affecting Thomas Cook's brand image and service quality. Desklib provides past papers and solved assignments for students.

MARKETING IN
TRAVEL AND
TOURISM

ISSUES IN THE PRODUCT,
PRICE AND PLACE ELEMENTS
OF THE MARKETING MIX
CONCERNING THOMAS COOK'S
SUMMER 2017 HOLIDAYS TO
MOROCCO AND EGYPT

Contract business holds a very
important feature that is
marketing mix, and the
marketing elements are
considered to be crucial for all
types of business. The following
are the marketing elements that
are related to the issue and are
discussed in detail.

 The product is the main thing that sets the business motive and element
with which the company rather the business organization will carry
forward their business upon and set business objectives. Based on this
thing, the company earns their profit and progress in the operational
functions. Products, price and place are the important elements that the
marketing mix consist of and playing an important role in the launch of
new products and services. Thomas Cook is a service providing the
organization that are mainly helping the tourists to guide their ways to
tourism. Business organizations like Thomas Cook face various issues
and difficulties regarding deciding the elements of marketing mixes that
ultimately leads to wastage of time, high production costs, inefficient and
improper utilization of the available resources, etc. Thomas Cook too
faces the same kind of issues related to such materials for the trip and
services (Marketing Mix of Tourism Industry Tourism Essay, 2016).

 Thomas Cook provides services that are considered to be
intangible, and therefore, the customers think twice before
availing such services and offers from the company as because
there is no chance of replacement or monetary assurance to loss
of servicing effects. Decided capital amounts set an obstruction
for the company to decide their tourism products that will be
beneficial and cost effective for the customers. Management of
the tourism product is difficult to make as the customers are
worried about the services that they are going to provide like the
attractiveness of the destination, ease of the destination,
accommodation and services (Elbanna, 2009).

 Price is another factor that creates many issues for the company
in the market and the company like Thomas Cook. This company
must set upon low prices for the purpose of inviting their
customers from different fields and be able to compete with their
competitors. Various factors like the tax, services, flight fares,
food quality and grades of the hotel along with profit need to be
evaluated for establishing of the pricing strategy that changes
according to the market needs and fuel prices. Transportation
cost depends upon the price fluctuation of the fuel (Evans,
Stonehouse and Campbell, 2012).

 Thomas Cook faces problems in deciding the places for
organizing the trips and distribution of the channels that would
be clean and safe to serve the customers the best and does not
affect their health. The places must be attractive enough, and
natural beauty needs to be charismatic. Thus, the people or the
customers those who are travelling must be attracted and feel
complete service satisfaction against their service payment, and
that is why the company has chosen places like Morocco and
Egypt (Erskine and Meyer, 2012).

The importance of service
sector mix elements to the
travel sector Service sector mix is the compact value of the product, place and
price. All such elements play bans important role in the travel and
tourism sector. The passengers can feel the importance of the
tourism products that are decided by Thomas Cook for the trip to
Morocco and Egypt. The products and services include the location,
entertainment, associated facilities and accommodation. Value and
quality of the services that are provided by the company influence
the customers to make them choose that company number of times.
Places like the Morocco and Egypt have some heritage, and cultural
factors that act as an attractive piece of history and nature and that
is liked by the customers. These strategies help the company to
increase their number of sales effectively by offering varied,
beautiful spots as an attraction of the customers (Francesconi,
2011).

 Advertisement, sales promotion, publicity, word of mouth promotion and
telemarketing bare some promotional features and techniques that the
company uses to evaluate their services and promote them to the
customers. These promotions influence people to go for the trips and thus,
to increase the sales. The frequency of place visits and duration of stay
increases with developing the services and products.
 Local people are the most important factor for this kind of tours as they
without any high coting promotes the heritage and culture of their place to
the foreign tourists and thus, helping the company overall as stakeholders.
People consists of the customers, agents, employees, guides, staffs of the
hotels who are trained by Thomas Cook to accomplish their goals and give
out the best of their service to the customers. The travel guides are chosen
to be skilled and funny who can guide the customers and entertain them
creating an effective service quality (Erskine and Meyer, 2012).

The concept of the total
tourism product to an
individual tourism business
such as Thomas Cook The travel and tourism industry are the complete packages of the
hotel industries, entertainment and site seeing guides and trekking
industries along with many more sectors that enhance the tourism
industry. The whole package makes individual ways of the product and
service concepts that help the industry grow economically. Attractive
services, healthy food, natural and heritage culture are the main
elements of the tourism products of Thomas Cook that generates the
customer satisfaction (Koning, 2014).

Products are main elements that the customers feel satisfied with and thus,
chosen more for their future trips recommending others too. The total experience
for the customers at Morocco and Egypt will be consisting of all these features.
Thomas Cook is going to pay more attractive services for the customers, and
that is the positive output with positive behaviour (Business Marketing, 2016).
Based on the total tourism experience they gather at visiting Morocco and Egypt,
they will decide and review how the trip was and can be modified or rectified if
any negative issues they face. The outcome of the experience that the
customers gather at the trips will make them decide whether to stick with the
same company or chose another. Time is also a factor that evaluates the value of
the experience they are going to gain, as the seasonal effects a matter deciding
the beauty and effectiveness of the trip. The quality of the experience makes the
difference of the image of the company by individual styles, nature, attraction,
etc. The product price that Thomas Cook offers is function facilities that the
customers get as per their desires and demands (Tsiotsou and Ratten, 2010). The
experience of the customers expresses a great scope for the company to
evaluate their purpose and procedures and thereby, to explain the quality they
provide to the customers. The overall experience that the customers get from
the tour will help them judge the good and bad of the whole event and make
preferences according to their needs, demands and desires.

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