Marketing Mix in Tourism

Abstract

In terms of globalization, turbulent and highly complex environment, competition is stronger and more ruthless. Tourism companies are faced with the need to find new ways, paths and methods for achieving sustainable competitive advantage. Tourism market is determined primarily by tourism demand and tourism offers. Tourism demand is determined by the motives as the driving force behind every deliberated planed activity, the family as the basic cell of society which is in charge of tourism demand, the image if it represents potential destinations, lifestyle of tourism services potential consumers, which is connected to a life cycle of an individual or a family. Tourism offer represents a temporal and spatial synchronization of attractive, communicative and receptive factors. An important feature of the tourism offer is its inflexibility, precisely due to the immutability of its basic offer elements. In the realization of market needs of Tourism Company, the key role belongs to marketing, which through its activities, primarily through marketing mix should identify and differentiate tourism product (compared to competition) and thus implement its strategic objectives. Marketing in the tourism has its own characteristics that derive from the fact that the product in tourism is a service. Besides, the invisibility of a product gives even more importance to the marketing. With the help of the marketing mix elements: product, price, promotion and distribution, the tourism organization adapts to environmental conditions, thus realizing its mission. This paper shows the importance of marketing and marketing mix elements separately (product, price, promotion and distribution) in the economic activities of tourism organizations.

DOI: 10.5901/ajis.2014.v3n2p111