ABSTRACT

Tourism has often been described as being about ‘selling dreams’, tourist experiences being conceptualized as purely a marketing confection, a socially constructed need. However, the reality is that travel for leisure, business, meetings, sports or visiting loved ones has grown to be a very real sector of the global economy, requiring sophisticated business and marketing practices.

The Routledge Handbook of Tourism Marketing explores and critically evaluates the current debates and controversies inherent to the theoretical, methodological and practical processes of marketing within this complex and multi-sector industry. It brings together leading specialists from range of disciplinary backgrounds and geographical regions to provide reflection and empirical research on this complex relationship. The Handbook is divided in to nine inter-related sections: Part 1 deals with shifts in the context of marketing practice and our understanding of what constitutes value for tourists; Part 2 explores macromarketing and tourism; Part 3 deals with strategic issues; Part 4 addresses recent advances in research; Part 5 focuses on developments in tourist consumer behaviour; Part 6 looks at micromarketing; Part 7 moves on to destination marketing and branding issues; Part 8 looks at the influence of technological change on tourism marketing; and Part 9 explores future directions.

This timely book offers the reader a comprehensive synthesis of this sub-discipline, conveying the latest thinking and research. It will provide an invaluable resource for all those with an interest in tourism and marketing, encouraging dialogue across disciplinary boundaries and areas of study.

This is essential reading for Tourism students, researchers and academics as well as those of Marketing, Business, Events Management and Hospitality Management.

chapter |12 pages

Introduction

part |71 pages

Strategic issues in tourism

chapter |16 pages

Experience, co-creation and technology

Issues, challenges and trends for technology enhanced tourism experiences

chapter |13 pages

Customer satisfaction in tourism

The search for the Holy Grail

part |70 pages

Advances in tourism marketing research

chapter |12 pages

Determining what works, what doesn't and why

Evaluating tourism marketing campaigns

chapter |18 pages

Archetype enactments in travellers' stories about places

Theory and advances in positivistic and qualitative methods

chapter |10 pages

Destination confusion

A photo elicitation study on brand confusion in tourism destinations

part |78 pages

Tourist consumer behaviour

chapter |13 pages

Fragmenting tourism

Niche tourists

chapter |14 pages

Tourist destination choice

A review and critical evaluation of preference estimation methods in tourism marketing research

part |82 pages

Micro-marketing issues in tourism

chapter |16 pages

Service design

Co-creating meaningful experiences with customers

chapter |14 pages

Contextualizing the past, conceptualizing the future

Tourism distribution and the impact of ICTs

chapter |15 pages

Staying close to the self-service traveller

Managing customer relationships in the era of self-service technologies

chapter |13 pages

Marketing communications in tourism

A review and assessment of research priorities

part |64 pages

Destination marketing and branding issues

part |74 pages

Social and digital media marketing issues in tourism

part |23 pages

Reflections