The role of marketing in the tourism industry. Marketing in tourism. Definitions of tourism product

The term "marketing" comes from the English. market - market, and literally means market activity or work with the market.

Along with the markets for goods, capital, and labor, an extensive market for services exists and interacts with them. The service sector is one of the most promising, fast-growing sectors of the economy. Marketing is not a new type of activity, since it covers problems that have always existed and, one way or another, were solved. The emergence and then strengthening of the role of marketing was facilitated by the complexity of the economic and competitive environment, changes in the demand for tourist services [Saak A.E., Pshenichnykh Yu.A. Marketing in socio-cultural services and tourism. - St. Petersburg: Peter, 2007. - 480 pp.: ill. - (Series “Tutorial”)].

Tourism marketing is a set of specific functions carried out by the administration of a tourism company in order to expand the sales market for its tourism product and services.

Tourism marketing is a system for managing and organizing the activities of tourism organizations to develop new, more effective types of tourist and excursion services, their production and sales in order to make a profit based on improving the quality of the tourism product and taking into account the processes occurring in the global tourism market. The main goal of tourism marketing is a targeted impact on the formation of recreational needs, demand, monopoly and commercial prices, market segmentation, development of the range of tourist and excursion services, advertising [Zorin I.V., Kvartalnov V.A. “Encyclopedia of Tourism: Directory. - M.: Finance and Statistics, 2000. - 368 p.: ill.].

A modern marketing concept in tourism is a concept that establishes the main priority in entrepreneurship - identifying and satisfying the desires and needs of customers.

Tourism marketing has three goals:

- preservation and protection of the traditional market (clientele);
- introduction, development and expansion of a new market;
- reducing the influence of seasonality.

To achieve these goals annually:

- the marketing plan is adjusted;
- groups are appointed to develop the proposed program of activity of the enterprise, resort, joint activities of a number of countries in the region, research of the attracted clientele and structuring of the marketing plan;
- cooperation is carried out with tour operators on loading, industrial support on the terms of joint participation in the market;
- new products (types of service) are tested;
- joint measures are being developed to promote the product in the tourism market;
- target market segments with a seasonal nature of service are being developed;
- Business tour packages are offered before and after conferences and congresses.

The main task of tourism marketing is to understand the consumer. Successful travel companies learn from those they serve. They call this “getting closer to the client” and constantly monitor their guests, trying to improve their service capabilities [Chelnokov A.G. Services marketing. - M.: TsMI and M, 2000].

Main functions of tourism marketing:

1. Creation of a tourism product and services for subsequent offering to clients.
2. Promotion of tourism products and services to the market, advertising and sales.
3. Organization of direct (personal) sales.
4. Creation of an acceptable level of income.

Promotion of a tourist product - activities aimed at increasing the sales of a tourist product or tourist service, including: advertising campaign; intensifying public relations; a campaign to distribute free gifts or stamps and coupons with a declared value, the accumulation of which gives the buyer the right to purchase goods for free; demonstrations and exhibitions; temporary price reductions; selling by telephone; sending letters to potential consumers.

In the hospitality industry, the marketing mix consists of four specific elements:

- a complex of goods and services;
- presentation complex;
-communication complex;
- distribution complex.

The result of an activity, subject in many cases to the influence of the qualities of the manufacturer, cannot be determined in advance with sufficient accuracy. Its final assessment is possible only after consuming the service.

Based on the features of marketing services and the tourism product itself, we can highlight the following features of tourism marketing [Saak A.E., Pshenichnykh Yu.A. Management in socio-cultural services and tourism: Textbook. - St. Petersburg: Peter, 2007. - 512 p.: ill. - (Tutorial Series).]:

- demand management, not stimulation. Stimulating demand is not a top priority, unlike other industries. The demand for tourism services is constantly growing, and the tourism industry is less dependent on changes in market conditions than other industries. For tourism marketing, the most important task is to regulate demand in the right direction;
- reliability and completeness of information about the tourism product;
- special attention to the issues of protecting the rights of the client - the consumer of the tourism product;
- the feasibility of diversifying tourism services and increasing attention to marketing activities in the off-season to reduce the dependence of tourism organizations on seasonality;
- taking into account in marketing activities not only material aspects, but also psychology, spiritual and emotional state and characteristics of consumers;
- the need to coordinate marketing activities carried out by all organizations involved in the production of tourism services.

The World Tourism Organization identifies three main functions of tourism marketing:

1. Establishing contacts with clients: the main goal is to convince clients that the proposed vacation spot fully corresponds to what the clients themselves want to receive;
2. Development: design of innovations;
3. Control: analysis of the results of activities to promote services on the market and check to what extent these results reflect the truly full and successful use of the opportunities available in the tourism sector.

Relationships with consumers are of particular importance in the marketing of a travel agency. Long-term relationships with clients are much cheaper than the marketing costs necessary to increase consumer interest in a company’s services with a new client [Saak A.E., Pshenichnykh Yu.A. Management in socio-cultural services and tourism: Textbook. - St. Petersburg: Peter, 2007. - 512 p.: ill. - (Series “Tutorial”)].

In the case of long-term relationships, customer satisfaction gives a synergistic effect, expressed in the formation of the client’s commitment and devotion to the seller and in his reluctance to change the tourist enterprise with repeated purchases. What is especially important for a travel agency, since it is in this area that the Pareto effect is clearly manifested - 20% of consumers bring 80% of the profit to the enterprise [Saak A.E., Pshenichnykh Yu.A. Marketing in socio-cultural services and tourism. - St. Petersburg: Peter, 2007. - 480 pp.: ill. - (Series “Tutorial”)].

The tourism industry is completely different from other sectors of activity and therefore the following features can be distinguished:

Firstly, when planning tourism activities, the needs, wants and desires of end consumers should be the focus.

Secondly, the non-primary nature of the tourism service. The tourism product has not yet become an essential commodity, although in the modern world the importance of tourism as a means of restoring strength and health is enormous.

Thirdly, marketing is much more important in the tourism industry. This is due to the fact that the seller of a tourist service, not being able to present its standard sample, must find arguments in favor of his product and service, and this can only be done with a well-established marketing system using all its tools.

Fourthly, due to the variability of service quality and subjectivity in its assessment, there is a need for its constant monitoring.

Fifthly, the tourist service is unique (it is not possible to repeat it in all aspects). This is the travel route, service conditions, cost.

Marketing of a travel agency is a system of continuous coordination of the services offered with services that are in demand in the market and which the tourism enterprise is able to offer at a profit for itself and more efficiently than competitors do [Chelnokov A.G. Services marketing. - M.: TsMI and M, 2000].

Thus, in a competitive environment, success can only be achieved by an enterprise that creatively and innovatively applies the marketing concept, constantly looking within its framework for new ways to adapt to constantly changing market conditions, and actively influence the market and consumers.

Specific features of tourism marketing

Tourism is one of the most dynamically developing sectors of the global service sector. Thanks to its rapid growth rate, tourism was recognized as an economic phenomenon of the twentieth century. Despite the fact that in our country tourism is not yet perceived as a full-fledged sector of the economy and as a subject for scientific analysis, the state pays increasing attention to tourism every year.

Example 1

The global economic and political situation has become an impetus for the active development of domestic tourism in Russia in recent years. The closure of major tourist destinations for Russian tourists turns Russians to domestic resorts and cultural and historical territories.

Every year the need for qualified personnel in the hospitality and tourism industry increases, the capabilities of universities emerge and expand, and advanced training courses appear that train tourism personnel.

Note 1

However, a specific feature that distinguishes tourism from other sectors of the economy is the peculiarity of the tourist “product” - services. According to experts, the share of services and goods in tourism is distributed as 75% and 25%, respectively. The result of activities in the field of tourism comes down to the tourism product.

The tourism product is a complex of services that best meet the desires of tourists and satisfy their needs for recreation, health improvement, knowledge of the surrounding world, accommodation, food and others.

The tourism product has the distinctive characteristics of a service, namely intangibility, non-storability, inseparability from the source and variability of quality (4 “NOT”). The four “NOTs” of a tourist service as a product significantly influence the features of tourism marketing.

Functions of tourism marketing

Tourism marketing is aimed primarily at developing a company in order to maximize profits, promoting its tourism products, and meeting the consumer expectations of tourists, based on the study of tourist demand.

According to the provisions of the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), there are three main functions of tourism marketing:

Formation of contacts with consumers of tourism services. Establishing contacts with clients aims to convince them that the proposed holiday destination and the existing services, attractions and expected benefits are fully consistent with what the clients themselves want to receive.
Developing contacts involves designing innovations that can provide new sales opportunities. Such innovations must meet the needs and preferences of potential clients. Development of contacts through innovations; ¢
Monitoring service results. Control involves analyzing the results of activities to promote goods and services to the market and checking to what extent the results reflect the full and successful use of opportunities available in the field of tourism, a comparative analysis of expenses for advertising marketing activities and income received.

Tourism marketing mix (4P + 3P)

The traditional marketing mix consists of the following interrelated elements, known as the 4Ps: Product - Price - Place - Promotion.

the service process (Process), developed using various design and reengineering methods, is aimed at improving the service functions of the tourism product;
staff (People). Contact personnel are company personnel who simultaneously produce and sell tourism services. Contact zone employees in marketing are often called “part-time marketers”;
material environment (Physical Evidence). This refers to the atmosphere of a hotel, restaurant, travel agency office, from a marketing point of view, the impact on human sensory channels: visual (harmonious design and interior, color schemes, organization of space, lighting), auditory (style of music, its tempo and volume), olfactory (room ventilation, pleasant smells), tactile (room temperature).

Note 2

Together with the other marketing mix strategies (product, price, distribution channels, promotion), these additional three elements form the tourism marketing mix.

Tourism in its main characteristics does not have any fundamental differences from other forms of economic activity. Therefore, all the essential provisions of modern marketing can be fully applied in tourism.

At the same time, tourism has its own specifics that distinguish it not only from trade in goods, but also from other forms of trade in services. Here there is trade in both services and goods (according to experts, the share of services in tourism is 75%, goods - 25%), as well as the special nature of the consumption of tourism services and goods at the place of their production, moreover, in a certain situation .

In traditional production, which has a specific result of labor (a product in material form), the concept of marketing has a more specific content. In tourism, the result of activity comes down to the tourist product. In essence, a tourist product is any service that satisfies certain needs of tourists and is payable by them. Tourist services include hotel, transport, excursion, translation, household, utility, intermediary, etc.

The main tourist product is comprehensive services, i.e. a standard set of services sold to tourists in one “package”; abroad they are often called package tours.

The tourism product has its own distinctive features:

Firstly, it is a complex of services and goods (material and intangible components), characterized by a complex system of relationships between various components.

Secondly, the demand for tourism services is extremely elastic with respect to income and prices, but largely depends on political and social conditions.

Thirdly, the consumer, as a rule, cannot see the tourism product before consuming it, and consumption itself in most cases is carried out directly at the place of production of the tourism service.

Fourthly, the consumer overcomes the distance separating him from the product and the place of consumption, and not vice versa.

Fifthly, the tourism product depends on variables such as space and time, and is characterized by fluctuations in demand.

Sixthly, the supply of tourism services is characterized by inflexible production. They can only be consumed directly on site. A hotel, airport, or recreation center cannot be moved to another region at the end of the season. They cannot adapt in time and space to changes in demand.

Seventh, the tourism product is created through the efforts of many enterprises, each of which has its own operating methods, specific needs and different commercial goals.

Eighth, high quality tourist services cannot be achieved if there are even minor shortcomings, since tourist services consist of these trifles and small details.

Ninth, assessing the quality of tourist services is characterized by significant subjectivity: the consumer’s assessment is greatly influenced by persons who are not directly related to the package of purchased services (for example, local residents, members of a tourist group).

Tenth, the quality of tourism services is influenced by external factors of a force majeure nature (natural conditions, weather, tourism policy, international events, etc.)

These specific features of the tourism product have a significant impact on tourism marketing.

Tourism marketing is a complex and capacious concept, which is why it has not yet received an accurate and final formulation. There are many definitions, including:

Methods and techniques aimed at identifying and satisfying the needs of people caused by recreational motives - the cognitive aspect, recreation, entertainment, treatment, etc. - and the organization of travel agencies or associations capable of rationally satisfying these needs;

Public and private activities of tourism enterprises, carried out according to international, national and regional plans in order to meet the needs of certain groups of tourists;

A system of trade and production activities aimed at meeting the individual needs of each consumer based on identifying and studying consumer demand in order to obtain maximum profit;

Market-oriented management aimed at achieving the goals of the enterprise by meeting the needs of tourists more effectively than competitors; Marketing can be used both at the level of an individual travel company, and individually among tourism concerns and holdings, including at the international level.

The World Tourism Organization identifies three main functions of tourism marketing:

1) establishing contacts with clients aims to convince them that the proposed holiday destination and the existing services, attractions and expected benefits fully correspond to what the clients themselves want to receive;

2) development involves the design of innovations that can provide new sales opportunities, in turn, such innovations must meet the needs and preferences of potential customers;

3) control involves analyzing the results of activities to promote services on the market and checking to what extent these results reflect the truly full and successful use of the opportunities available in the tourism sector.

A tourism product must be a good purchase. In this regard, marketing is the consistent actions of tourism enterprises aimed at achieving such a goal. Therefore, the following definition of marketing is quite logical and justified.

Marketing in tourism is a system of continuous coordination of the services offered with services that are in demand in the market and which the tourism enterprise is able to offer at a profit for itself and more efficiently than competitors do.

This rather long definition contains a number of ideas that we will explore in more detail.

The first point that requires attention is that marketing is not a separate action, but a system of activities. In other words, it is a sequence of actions of a tourism enterprise that must be combined to achieve its goals. Therefore, marketing is not only advertising and selling services or simply developing services. It is a system in which all functions and activities must be integrated in accordance with the marketing concept.

This circumstance fundamentally distinguishes marketing from commercial work. If commercial work is to use all forces and means to enhance sales, then the goal of marketing is the interconnected process of producing and selling services in accordance with consumer demand.

The second point to note in our definition is that marketing does not end with one action. You can't think of it as a monotonous process, whether it's the launch date of a new product or the introduction of a new price. The fact is that the market is constantly in motion, in dynamics. For example, consumer demand changes under the influence of various factors; competitors are also working to introduce new services to the market. These examples suggest that marketing truly is a continuous process, and the tourism enterprise must be continuously involved in it. Marketing, therefore, involves looking to the future and not just focusing on the present.

The third point concerns coordination. It is necessary to coordinate actions within the tourism enterprise with the conditions of the external environment. If all this is considered separately, it is impossible to achieve the intended goals. This means that the decision must be made in order to use all marketing tools to achieve this agreement.

The fourth idea embedded in our definition concerns understanding, what the service offered by the company actually is. The classic question that must be asked to emphasize this point is: “What business are we really in?” This formulation of the question forces the company to look at its services from the point of view of the consumer. Another answer to this question will be related to the consideration of the company’s resources and what else can be done with them (material, human). Many firms are surprised to discover new potential opportunities opening up.

The fifth point in our definition gives the concept of What does marketing do to satisfy customer needs?. This means not only what the client is currently purchasing, but also what he would buy under other circumstances (for example, with an increase in income). Marketing should be an activity of foresight. It involves forecasting, or at least getting a good view of, what consumers are likely to need most. It also provides an opportunity to evaluate whether those who are not the firm's clients can be persuaded to use the services it offers.

The sixth point of our definition emphasizes that marketing allows you to identify and implement means of increasing profits. This makes it a purely economic category. The goals of travel companies must be realized through high-quality satisfaction of customer needs over a sufficiently long period of time.

The marketing mix is a set of means of influencing consumers of the target market in order to evoke the desired response from them. The main elements of a successfully functioning marketing complex for a tourism company are presented in Fig. 1.1.

Figure 1.1 Key elements of the marketing mix

In relation to tourism, there are several more components of the marketing mix:

Personnel, their qualifications and training;

Service provision process;

Environment.

The tourism business is unique in the sense that the personnel of enterprises are part of the tourism product. Hospitality and friendliness are the main condition for everyone, and not just specialists in direct customer service. Marketing should be an integral part of the philosophy of the entire organization, and marketing functions should be performed by all employees. A key factor in the competitiveness of a tourism enterprise is measures (events) to mobilize the creative activity of the team.

An important factor in high-quality customer service is the environment - the appearance of the building, office design, furniture, equipment, office equipment, etc. The atmosphere of a product offering (physical environment) is perceived through the senses (vision, hearing, smell, touch) and influences purchasing behavior in four ways:

1) can serve as a carrier of information for potential consumers;

2) can serve as a means of attracting the attention of customers;

3) can be the bearer of a certain effect (colors, sounds and properties of the surfaces of objects surrounding the client affect his consciousness and encourage him to buy);

4) can create a certain mood.

To ensure the effectiveness of marketing management, the development of its auxiliary systems is required:

· marketing information;

· marketing organization;

· marketing control.

Marketing information system ensures the receipt, systematization, evaluation and use of information characterizing the state of the external environment and internal environment of the tourism enterprise. Without objective, relevant, sufficiently complete marketing information, it is impossible to make operational and strategic decisions.

Marketing organization system is aimed at creating an appropriate organizational structure of a tourism enterprise that ensures the implementation of marketing activities.

To constantly monitor the implementation of marketing strategies and programs, a marketing control system.

In practice, the technology for implementing the marketing concept is very flexible. It can change both its structure and the place of individual stages depending on the characteristics of the enterprise, the degree of market development, set goals, objectives and market conditions. However, all these elements are closely interrelated. None of them can be excluded from the system without violating its integrity.

Marketing concept that emerged at the end of the 19th century. in the USA, begins to be used by tourism professionals in the 50s. VSKH c. in Europe.

Tourism marketing is a system of interrelated techniques aimed at researching and transforming the tourism services market in accordance with customer needs.

It is an integral part of service sector marketing, therefore, tourism marketing recommendations must be used when creating service services, for planning and monitoring the quality of their work. The following definition is often used: tourism marketing is a constant study of how adequately an enterprise meets the requirements of the market in which it operates.

But, giving such a general definition of tourism marketing, it should be remembered that the tourism sector, created by a system of enterprises of more than 56 sectors of the economy, significantly different in the type of activity (a chain of restaurants, hotels, travel agencies, transport organizations, etc.), presupposes a difference in marketing goals, methods, means.

For travel agencies, restaurants and local tourism offices, hotels, marketing is not at all the same thing. The ultimate goals of marketing are different for an enterprise that seeks to increase its profits, for a national or regional administration that wants to attract as many tourists as possible to the region, and for a tourism organization, transport, hotel and restaurant chains. But they are all involved in marketing to a greater or lesser extent.

Speaking about the importance of marketing in the field of tourism, American specialist G. Harris notes: “Tourism requires more than just marketing. It must strive to make attractions more attractive. This means preserving and developing natural tourist sites. Ultimately, it is the unique cultural heritage, wild nature or The beauty of the landscape is what primarily attracts tourists." This definition emphasizes the national importance of tourism marketing.

Tourism as a branch of the world economy is becoming increasingly relevant; a large social layer of society is associated with the tourism sector: about 1 billion people participate in international and more than 2 billion in domestic tourism. It is obvious that tourism marketing is increasingly acquiring a social connotation, based on the study of public needs for recreation, especially since the range of offers to satisfy these needs increases from year to year. Tourism marketing is becoming an urgent necessity, a means for studying and satisfying the obvious and hidden needs of the planet's inhabitants V full use of free time, vacations and vacations.

The definition of tourism marketing, based on the above, could be as follows: tourism marketing- this is “a series of basic methods and techniques developed for research, analysis and solution of assigned problems. The main thing that these methods and techniques should be aimed at is identifying the possibilities of most fully satisfying people’s needs from the point of view of psychological and social factors, and also to determine how tourism organizations (enterprises, bureaus or associations) conduct business in the most financially rational way, allowing them to take into account identified or hidden needs for tourism services.

These kinds of needs can be determined either by leisure motives (entertainment, vacation, health, education, religion and sports), or by other motives that are often found among business groups, families, various missions and unions" (WTO).

Experts identify five groups of factors influencing the formation of tourism needs.

1. Natural factors (geographical location of the vacation spot, climate, flora, fauna, etc.).
2. Socio-economic development of the holiday destination (language, economic and cultural level of development of the country).
3. Material base of the tourism industry (transport, hotels, catering, leisure, sports and resort establishments, etc.).
4. Infrastructure of the recreation area (communications, access roads, lighting, beaches, parking lots, gardening facilities, etc.).
5. Tourist offer (hospitality resources, including excursion, educational, sports, entertainment, resort and recreational offers).

Tourism marketing studies the needs of each specific category of Tourists (market segment).

Marketing research of the tourism services market consists of:

a) analysis of recreational conditions, material and recreation infrastructure;
b) studying the directions of development of consumer demand -
c) working out the correspondence between possible supply and existing demand.

The main motives for choosing tourist services, as a rule, are the type of tourism and a certain level (class) of service, duration of vacation. The specialization of services based on age and family composition is dictated by the specifics of servicing people of different age groups, which arises on the basis of the psychophysiological characteristics of a particular age, and is determined by the size of the flow of tourists to a specific material base.

The main thing that modern marketing methods should be aimed at is identifying opportunities to most fully satisfy people's needs from the point of view of psychological and social factors, as well as determining the optimal methods for the financial activities of travel companies, based on available resources.

Tourism marketing is always a continuous process, since it is always necessary to know new customer needs and monitor the results. The objective difficulty is that the demand for tourism services is extremely elastic with respect to income and prices, but also largely depends on the political and social conditions in the regions of the world. Demand for tourism services is also subject to significant seasonal fluctuations and has saturation limits.

The supply in the tourism sector is not flexible, since there is no possibility of creating reserves (tourism services are consumed locally). A hotel or airport cannot be moved at the end of the tourist season to another region, i.e. they cannot adapt to changes in demand over time and space.

The tourism business is characterized by a high share of fixed capital in the total costs and liability structure of tourism enterprises. Fixed assets account for most of the expenses. This is unprofitable for a tourist who must pay the costs of operating enterprises in the off-season period, a company that cannot use existing fixed assets all year round, and a country that cannot receive foreign exchange earnings all year round.

In this regard, in relation to the tourism business, synchromarketing is of greatest relevance, which can smooth out fluctuations in the seasonality of the destruction of tourism products.

The use of synchromarketing techniques and methods in France made it possible to level out the seasonality of demand. Therefore, today the main peak (70%) of the influx of tourists into the country occurs in the off-season period - November-March. It was possible to change seasonal fluctuations by promoting the international value of France's historical and cultural heritage. Therefore, the Cote d'Azur and the Riviera, which only 7 years ago provided 70% of the country's tourism income, have faded into the background. Today, tours to Paris (Louvre, Versailles and other historical and cultural centers) are more prestigious.

In this regard, it is important for travel agencies to conduct research to find methods and means of smoothing out the seasonality of demand, including assessing the possibilities of organizing and holding international exhibitions and symposia in the off-season period, which allows both to “preserve” the product and to smooth out seasonality in the use of fixed assets. Thus, the resort city of Sochi offers buildings of sanatoriums and rest houses for rent during the off-season period for holding seminars, conferences, and studies.

One of the necessary components of the success of the tourism business is the ability of travel agency employees to choose an appropriate strategy of behavior when serving clients with different socio-psychological features.

Interest in different forms of behavior and the diversity of people's reactions to the same phenomena has existed for a long time. The first attempts to classify people into types were made in Ancient China in the 8th-7th centuries. BC e. As the basis for this classification, ancient Chinese scientists took the presence of bile, mucus, blood and air-like substances in humans. The proportions of their mixing cause different reactions to external circumstances.

A later classification, which is currently used by many scientists, was proposed by the ancient Greek physician Hippocrates (V-IV centuries BC). Unfortunately, from Hippocrates’ rather extensive teaching on temperaments, in our time only a classification is used that involves dividing people into sanguine, choleric, phlegmatic and melancholic.

Swiss psychologist C. G. Jung proposed to distinguish people by the openness of their souls. This classification divides people into extroverts and introverts.

An extrovert is a person with an open soul, exceptionally disposed towards people, sociable, able to capture the attention of others, not recognizing any secrets, capable of solving even insoluble problems. An introvert is closed, focused, silent, secretive, and knows how to foresee a situation several moves ahead.

Human science knows many other classifications. Getting to know them will help you create your own classification, which will most accurately reflect the contingent of clients served in your company.

A special feature of service in a travel agency is that the client often comes more than one, so the company employee must be ready to communicate with several types of people at once.

Negotiations are an important step in the service process, so they should be carefully prepared. The more important the negotiations, the more thorough scrutiny they require. You should “scroll” several options for the course of negotiations in advance, calculate the results, select the desired option during the negotiations and try to stick to it.

During the dialogue, a number of practical recommendations need to be taken into account.

1. Don’t solve the problem right away, build a relationship with the client, get rid of formality.
2. When you have to solve several issues at once, you need to arrange your goals in order of their importance, determine what you can sacrifice.
3. Resolve non-contentious issues first.
4. Be always correct and alert, even when attacking enemy positions harshly.
5. If you have known weaknesses, tell them about them before the client discovers them himself.
6. Be prepared to answer any question, even if it is a paraphrase of what was just said.
7. Don't ignore your interlocutor's beliefs during counter-persuasions. Treat him with respect.
8. Use your interlocutor’s statements to develop his own thoughts.
9. Refer to other people's experiences.
10. Know how to listen.
11. If negotiations reach a dead end, consider the problem from the other side.
12. Even unsuccessfully concluded negotiations cannot be rudely terminated; one must leave hope for a solution in the future.

Taking into account the psychological characteristics of certain types of clients and selecting individual methods of working with them will certainly have a positive role in the service process and will increase the efficiency of the entire work of the tourism enterprise.

The World Tourism Organization identifies three main functions tourism marketing:

1) communication with clients, convincing them that the proposed vacation spot and the services and attractions existing there fully correspond to what the clients themselves want to receive;
2) development - designing innovations that can provide new sales opportunities. To do this, such innovations must meet the needs and preferences of potential customers;
3)marketing control-- analysis (using numerous methods) of the results of activities to promote goods or services on the market and check to what extent these results reflect the truly full and successful use of opportunities available in the tourism industry; comparative analysis of the costs of advertising marketing activities and the income generated.

To implement these functions in the market, the company must collect and analyze relevant information. The information network in the tourism business involves the use of official sources of information, as well as specially obtained information as a result of on-site research during observations, surveys, conversations, and experiments. Often collecting information costs a lot of money, so it is important to be able to optimize the database of informative data. This is also a marketing task.

Despite the differences between tourism organizations, the information necessary for their marketing activities can be briefly described as follows:

· on foreign tourism: profession; floor; travel purposes; countries and cities visited; duration of visit; placements; types of transport and vehicles; travel organization;
· data on the accommodation stock - hotel category; places; rates; percentage of places occupied; data on housing comfort; its remoteness (from the center, the sea);
· data on tourism services - financial indicators on taxes; size of investment; expert opinion about the market;
· other information: about sea, rail, road and air transport; about banks; restaurants; shops; calendar of national holidays and celebrations.

Marketing has gone through a complex path of evolution, a characteristic feature of which is the globalization of this concept, i.e. its use in various spheres of human activity. Taking this into account, certain types of marketing are distinguished: consumer goods; industrial goods; capital construction projects; services (tourist, banking, insurance, household, educational, etc.).

Various types of marketing are characterized by a general methodology, however, the content and specifics of the implementation of its concept depend on the scope of the enterprise’s activities and the nature of the product it offers to the market.

Tourism in its main characteristics is not fundamentally different from other forms of economic activity. Therefore, all the essential provisions of the marketing concept can be fully used to ensure the effective functioning of the tourism system.

At the same time, tourism has specific features that distinguish it not only from trade in physically tangible goods, but also from other forms of trade in services. This allows us to consider marketing in tourism as an independent activity and academic discipline.

Tourism is characterized by the fact that it presents a tourist product to the market - a special type of product that has a number of features from the point of view of using the marketing concept. A tourist product is a set of services combined on the basis of the main purpose of travel and provided at a certain time along a certain route in accordance with a predetermined program. Such a complex of services, which together form a tourist trip (tour) or are directly related to it, is perceived by consumers as a single product and is purchased precisely in the aggregate (in one “package”) of all its components. Therefore, it is no coincidence that in Art. 1 of the Federal Law of November 24, 1996 No. 132-FZ “On the fundamentals of tourism activities in the Russian Federation” (as amended on January 17, 2007; hereinafter referred to as the Law on Tourism Activities), a tourism product is defined as “a set of services for transportation and accommodation provided for a total price (regardless of the inclusion in the total price of the cost of excursion services and (or) other services) under an agreement on the sale of a tourist product.”

Thus, the tourism product in the broad sense is, in fact, synonymous with the term “tour”, widely used in the practice of the tourism business.

The latter, as a rule, acts as the primary sales unit (commodity form) of the tourism product, released into the sphere of circulation. The structure of the tour varies greatly depending on the purpose of travel, the needs and characteristics of tourists, their effective demand, the nature, range and quality of services offered. The cost of a tour is usually lower than the total cost of the individual services that make up it. Abroad, tourist trips implemented on the basis of standard sets or packages of services with a pre-established service program and a single price for the consumer are called package tours. package tour) or exclusive tours (English, inclusive tour). They are the main subject of activity of tour operators and travel agents.

In addition to the tours themselves, the market offers and is in demand for certain tourist services (accommodation, transportation, catering, meeting the cultural, business, information needs of tourists, etc.), which can be considered as a tourist product in its narrow sense. In addition to the services themselves, consumers are also provided with specific material consumer goods, souvenirs and other commercial products (for example, tourist equipment, maps, destination descriptions, guidebooks, dictionaries, etc.).

Features of the tourism product have a significant impact on the implementation of the marketing concept. Thus, the tourism product is characterized primarily by the general characteristics of services, intangibility, continuity of production and consumption, variability of quality, and inability to store.

The intangibility or intangible nature of tourism services means that they cannot be demonstrated, seen, tasted or examined before being received. It is difficult for the buyer to understand and evaluate what is being sold, both before and sometimes after receiving the service. He is forced to take the seller's word for it. As a result, there is necessarily an element of hope and trust in the seller on the part of consumers.

At the same time, the intangibility of services complicates the seller’s activities. Tourism enterprises face at least two problems: on the one hand, it is extremely difficult to show customers their goods, and on the other hand, to explain to them what they are paying money for. The seller can only describe the benefits that the buyer will receive after providing the service, and the services themselves can only be evaluated after they have been performed. It follows that the main concepts in tourism marketing are benefit, benefit, which the client will receive by using the company’s services.

The intangible nature of services confronts the enterprise with the task of not only materializing them (offering advertising materials that help consumers understand and evaluate the services provided; providing feedback from grateful clients, information about the enterprise, qualifications and experience of employees, etc.), but also creating a certain atmosphere of service. It is largely determined by the design of points of sale, furniture, equipment, office equipment, and the appearance of employees. The atmosphere of the proposal (physical environment, English) .physical evidence) a tourist product is perceived through the senses (vision, hearing, smell, touch) and has a significant impact on purchasing behavior.

In solving problems associated with the intangibility of services, no less important are the tools of communication influence on consumers, expressed in the ability of tourism enterprises to form channels for the dissemination of positive information about satisfying customer requests “by word of mouth” (eng. world of mouth) and through opinion leaders.

Actions aimed at materializing services have a beneficial effect on consumers, increase their level of trust in the enterprise and are thus marketing tools aimed at obtaining additional benefits.

An important feature of the tourism product is the inseparability of production and consumption of services. A service can only be provided when an order is received or a client appears. From this point of view, the production and consumption of tourism services are closely interconnected and cannot be separated.

The inextricable relationship between production and consumption suggests that many services are inseparable from the person who provides them. Thus, service in a restaurant is inseparable from the waiters. If they do not know how to properly serve food and serve the customer, then no matter how wonderful the food in this restaurant is, the overall assessment of the level of service by visitors will be low, and their judgment of it will most likely be negative. The staff of a tourism enterprise has direct contact with the consumer, and the latter views him as an inseparable part of the tourism product. In addition, the consumer does not just consume services, he connects to their production.

A consequence of the inseparability of production and consumption of services is that the quality of service is directly dependent on:

the nature and level of interaction between the enterprise’s personnel and its clients, as well as various groups of employees among themselves;
other persons actively involved in the service process or passively observing it (for example, participants in a group tourist trip);
the ability of staff to respond at a fixed time, and sometimes immediately, to customer requests in the process of servicing them, and, if necessary, to make adjustments to this process.

These circumstances determine a new (in addition to the traditional, classical) functional task of marketing. There is a need to study, create, advertise, market, sell and evaluate the interaction between those who produce a service and those who consume it.

Involving the buyer in the process of producing and consuming a service means that the seller must be concerned not only with what to produce, but also with how to produce it. The second task is of particular importance. It is the process of service production that most clearly demonstrates the need for tourism enterprises to use relationship marketing, aimed not only at establishing, but also at developing and maintaining interaction with consumers (see 15.3). Long-term relationships with them are much cheaper than marketing

business expenses necessary to increase interest in the enterprise from new consumers. For example, it is known that winning a new client costs an enterprise about 6 times more than organizing sales to a regular customer. And if the consumer remains unsatisfied, then winning his attention again will cost 25 times more. This circumstance led to the fact that Tourism marketing is viewed as the process of establishing, maintaining and improving interactions with consumers and other entities to meet the goals of all parties involved in the exchange.

Relationship marketing increases the importance of the individual and personal contacts in the system of effective communications. Moreover, it distributes responsibility for making marketing decisions to the entire enterprise staff. And this, in turn, requires the formation of a high-quality service provider, who brings a certain materiality to the process of providing it. This becomes possible if the enterprise provides for its employees such conditions (workplaces) that allow the staff to be satisfied in material and meaningful terms. Creating such conditions is the task of internal marketing, aimed at applying the marketing philosophy and its approaches to personnel so that they best serve customers (see 15.4). In this regard, K. Grönroos, the most famous representative of the Nordic school of service marketing, emphasizes: “The concept of internal marketing states that the employees of the company should be best motivated to provide meaningful service and perform customer-oriented work. The concept of internal marketing assumes an active marketing approach and appropriate coordination of personnel actions.”

An inevitable consequence of the inseparability of production and consumption of services is the variability of their quality. Services are heterogeneous in nature, which means there is a high degree of heterogeneity in their execution. The quality of a service depends significantly on who, where and when it is provided. For example, in one hotel the service is of high quality, and in another, neighboring one, it is of lower quality. One of the company's employees is polite and friendly, while the other is rude and unfriendly. Even the same employee provides services differently during the working day. There can be many reasons for this: poor health, work conflict, family problems, etc.

The variability of service quality is significantly influenced by two groups of factors. The first group is directly related to the organization of personnel selection and work with the enterprise. Thus, the variability of services can be caused by low qualifications of workers, their poor training and education, lack of communications and information, and lack of proper control over the work of personnel.

Another very important source of service variability is the buyer himself, his uniqueness, which explains the high degree of individualization of services in accordance with consumer requirements. At the same time, this necessitates a thorough, comprehensive and systematic study of consumer behavior. As a result, an enterprise providing services has the opportunity to manage consumer behavior or, at least, take into account psychological aspects when working with clients.

Variability and fluctuations in the quality of services lead to the fact that the buyer in most cases does not have the opportunity to control the process of their provision and influence the result. Therefore, when purchasing a service, the consumer risks more than when purchasing a product in material form. As a rule, the buyer of a service does not expect complete identity of the result of the service, even if he repeatedly uses the services of a particular enterprise. Moreover, the state of relative uncertainty and concern, for this reason, may not only not decrease, but may even increase, for example, as previous experience accumulates. Thus, many are familiar with the feeling of slight excitement that precedes visiting even a restaurant that has long been known to us. This implies an important marketing task, which consists in the need to take measures to reduce the uncertainty of the result of the service. To solve this problem, many tourism industry enterprises are developing service standards.

Service standard - This is a set of mandatory consumer service rules that are designed to guarantee the established level of quality for all operations performed. Thus, such a standard for a tourist enterprise establishes formal criteria by which the level of customer service and staff performance are assessed. Such criteria could be:

time spent on providing a specific service;
appearance of the staff, presence of uniform;
knowledge of foreign languages by staff;
procedure for regulating customer complaints and claims (for example,

immediate response by mail or telephone to written complaints), etc.

Standardization of service, where the relationship between staff and clients becomes an important property of the tourism product, is an effective means of creating an attractive and easily recognizable image of the enterprise. High-quality application of service standards and monitoring their compliance are one of the important functions of tourism marketing.

A characteristic feature of services is their inability to store. Transport costs and overnight stays in accommodation facilities cannot be accumulated for further sale. Unoccupied hotel rooms or airplane seats result in irreparable losses for their owners.

The inability of services to store is not a difficult problem in conditions of constant demand. However, the latter for most tourist services fluctuates and changes depending on the time of year and days of the week. If demand becomes greater than supply, then the situation cannot be changed, as, for example, in a store, receiving goods from the warehouse. On the other hand, if the capacity to provide services exceeds the demand for them, then income is lost.

The unsustainability of services means that special measures must be taken to achieve a balance between supply and demand. These include: establishing differentiated prices; application of discounts; introduction of a system of pre-orders (tour bookings); increasing the speed of service; combination of personnel functions.

The choice of one or another marketing technique for managing demand is based on the study and analysis of factors influencing its fluctuations. The most significant aspects are:
determining the nature of demand changes (random or predictable);
identification of cyclicality in periods of demand (within a week, month, year or a number of years);
establishing the reasons causing changes in the level of demand (natural-climatic, socio-cultural, economic, etc.).

Tourism enterprises that combine in their activities a research marketing orientation and the use of information systems necessary for the development of effective demand management techniques receive specific advantages in the market.

The considered general characteristics of services (intangibility, continuity of production and consumption, variability of quality, inability to store) increase consumer risk and complicate its assessment during tourism activities. Research on risk perception in the service sector has shown the following: consumers recognize that services are more variable in nature, therefore purchasing them is riskier than purchasing a physical product. A tourism enterprise must pay attention to these risks and develop measures to reduce them, which will not only retain regular customers, but also attract new ones.

Along with the general characteristics of services, the tourism product has distinctive features:

demand for tourism services is extremely elastic in relation to the consumer’s income level and prices, and is also subject to seasonal fluctuations;
special nature of consumption. A product in material form is ready for consumption when its movement from the place of production to the place of consumption is completed. Tourist services in most cases are consumed when the tourist is delivered to the place of their production;
the dependence of the tourism product on variables such as space and time. The services offered to consumers are usually divided geographically. Some of them (information, intermediary) tourists receive in the country (place) of their permanent residence, others - during travel (for example, transport), and still others - in the country (place) of temporary stay (accommodation, meals, excursion services, etc.). d.);
The supply of tourism products is characterized by inflexible production. Many services can only be consumed on site. A hotel, airport, or recreation center cannot be moved at the end of the season to another region in order to adapt in time and space to changes in demand;
assessment of the quality of a tourism product is characterized by significant subjectivity: a great influence on the consumer’s perception of the quality of service is exerted by persons who are not directly related to the package of purchased services (for example, local residents, members of a tourist group);
in some cases, the quality of the tourism product is influenced by external factors of a force majeure nature (natural conditions, weather, political and international events);
A tourist product is created through the efforts of many enterprises, each of which has its own operating methods, specific technologies and various commercial goals. This objectively creates great organizational difficulties in achieving coordinated actions in the production, offering and sale of a tourism product and ensuring a high level of quality of service for tourists.

Thus, the quality of a tourist product is formed by various factors, which is a consequence of its essence, since a tourist product is a set of services that satisfy the needs of tourists during travel and are the result of the efforts of many enterprises tourism industry, which is defined by the Law on Tourism Activities as “a set of hotels and other accommodation facilities, means of transport, sanitary and resort treatment and recreation facilities, public catering facilities, entertainment facilities and facilities, educational, business, medical and recreational, physical education, sports and other purposes , organizations engaged in tour operator and travel agency activities, operators of tourist information systems, as well as organizations providing the services of tour guides (guides), guide-interpreters and instructors-interpreters.” This emphasizes the need for an integrated approach to all elements of the tourism industry in the formation, promotion and sale of a tourism product and ensuring coordination of their marketing activities. Various institutional units (enterprises, industry and inter-industry public organizations, tourism management bodies, etc.) are integrated into tourism marketing. In this regard, the following are highlighted: levels of marketing in tourism:

marketing of tourism enterprises;
marketing of tourism service producers;
marketing of public tourism organizations;
marketing of tourist destinations.

The first two levels relate to the field of commercial marketing.

Marketing of tourism enterprises(tour operators, travel agents; see 1.4), which are the main link in business activity in tourism, is a process of coordinating their capabilities and consumer demands. The result of this process is the provision of services to tourists that satisfy their needs, and the receipt by the enterprise of the profit necessary for its development and better satisfaction of consumer needs in the future.

Marketing of tourism service providers(hotels, restaurants, transport organizations, etc.) is considered as a system of comprehensive study of needs and demand with the aim of organizing the provision of services that are maximally focused on meeting the needs of specific consumers, and providing the most effective forms and methods of service.

The next two levels characterize the field of non-profit tourism marketing.

Marketing of public tourism organizations(unions, associations, etc.) representing and protecting the collective interests of entrepreneurs in the field of tourism is understood as activities aimed at creating, maintaining or changing favorable public opinion. Creating public opinion is essentially marketing management that has shifted from the product level to the entire organization level.

Marketing of tourist destinations- activities undertaken to create, maintain or change tourist behavior towards specific localities, regions or even countries as a whole (see Chapter 16). Similar activities are carried out by regulatory and coordinating bodies in tourism at the municipal, regional and national levels.

There must be a close relationship between the various levels of tourism marketing, which is expressed in vertical coordination of marketing activities. It is necessary for optimal consideration and respect for the interests of tourists, enterprises, institutions and organizations of the tourism industry and society as a whole. Ideally, tourism authorities and public tourism organizations receive information about the state of the market from enterprises, and the latter, in turn, take state (regional, local) concepts of tourism development as the basis for their marketing strategies. Marketing developments of state and local tourism authorities are not a directive, but an important means of guiding the activities of tour operators and travel agents, who are the main link in the implementation of the marketing concept in tourism.

Along with vertical coordination, horizontal coordination or cooperation of marketing activities, the main reasons for which are:

the need to achieve relative uniformity in the quality and price of a tourism product at all stages of its formation, promotion and sale, since this process involves a number of enterprises (for example, a hotel, an airline, a tour operator, a travel agent) that have legal and economic independence;
significant marketing costs. Most medium and small enterprises cannot afford significant costs for market research, advertising, and public relations. This necessitates the cooperation of marketing efforts. Its possible forms can be: conducting marketing research. Joint advertising, training and advanced training of personnel, participation in exhibitions and fairs.

Thus, to achieve a positive effect, it is necessary to coordinate the marketing of various enterprises, organizations and institutions integrated into the tourism system.