ABSTRACT
Geography is arguably the most important variable in market segmentation and tourism marketing approaches. A glance through any major textbook on marketing and/or tourism marketing quickly reveals that geographic segmentation is commonly listed as the first or second variable in the relevant chapter. However, some observers would argue that geographic segmentation has lost its pre-eminent influence and that other segmentation variables, such as life-stage and lifestyle, have gained greater importance. To what extent these other variables were and are used by the vast majority of the tourism industry remains questionable; often the academic literature suggesting yet another way of segmenting the market appears to be eclectic and not necessarily reflective of industry practice. For example, most tourism destination organizations use geographic segmentation as their primary if not only segmentation variable. Marketing budgets are usually allocated by market region and not by any other variable. In the case of New Zealand, for example, marketing budgets are established for Japan, North Asia, South East Asia, North America, etc., and not by age of travelers, family life cycle stage, adventure tourists, business traveler or alike. Most travel agencies only use geographic orientation to market to their customers with local newspapers and yellow pages being the pre-
dominant fonns of the promotion mix. Only a few travel agencies have specialized in specific types of traveling and would accordingly use other distribution channels.
