Tourism Destination Marketing

Tourism Destination Marketing

Presented by

Institution

Destination

General overview

The city of Orillia is located in Ontario along the shores of Lakes Simcoe and Couchiching. Orillia is just an hour drive North of Toronto and approximately 200 KM from Canada. Orillia The city of Orillia offers a wide variety of features that attract many people from different parts of the world. Two main highway corridors, highway 11 and highway 12 provide convenient access to the South, East and West of Orillia attracting about 130 million customers yearly (Orillia, 2012). The figure in appendix I show the location of Orillia destination. Many economic activities take place in the city. These include art and culture, education & training, healthcare services, and tourism. The Economic Development Committee (EDC) realized that tourism in Orillia attracted a lot of revenues and decided to improve the sector. The city offers various tourism related business activities that include events, cultural opportunities and attractions, and various festivals all year round. In addition, the development facilitates the provision of necessary resources that ensure quality tourism related services. Moreover, they encourage the community in enhancing tourism through various activities and promotions (Regional Tourism Profile, 2009).

Because of the increased number of tourists in Canada, Ontario should design a perfect marketing strategy that ensures more people continue visiting the Orillia destination. Tourism industry incurs many losses in case the destination management fails in designing the best features that attract more visitors (Jackson, 2003). Orillia has an advantage because it possesses a variety of tourism attraction activities. The destination also offers attractions to scholars and educationists since it contains beautiful libraries and archives hosting historical documents. Tourists interested in natural attractions find it fun in Orillia. The place has beautiful beaches, water bodies, parks and gardens where tourists can comfortably relax and enjoy their stay. Finally, Orillia has excellent sports and entertainment places that host many visitors from different parts of the world. These sporting activities include quality casinos, fitness and recreational centers, markets, and movie theatres.

Two proposed tourist attraction activities/events.

Understanding marketing characteristics ensure the success of any business because they have full details about competitors. Most tourist destination centers in Canada provide beautiful sceneries and high standard hotels for their visitors. The destinations have not realized the importance of selecting few activities of events that would increase the percentage of visitors. Orillia has many tourist attraction activities and events but improving these would improve its number of visitors.

First, the destination should focus on improving the quality of games offered. Most tourists travel for fun and requires mind refreshing games. Investing on both indoor and outdoor games would improve the tourism market increase earnings. The destination has an advantage because its location falls near water bodies. The beautiful beaches offer excellent sites for playing outdoor games like boat riding, hiking, and kayaking. Sustainable development strategies play a significant role in planning and growth of a tourist destination centre. In addition, the destination should introduce more indoor games to be played mostly in the evening. Casino Rama is built with modern technology and offers excellent services for tourists.

Second, most visitors love cultural events in order to learn more about other communities’ cultures. Introducing dancing competitions from different ethnic groups visiting the destination would encourage more tourists in Orillia. The main motivating factors for this tourist event is the way many people love attending these festivals. In addition, tourist department receives festival repeat requests from customers all over the world. Currently, Orillia stages various cultural festivals and events every month. During these months, the city records the most number of tourists showing the level of attraction they create. Understanding people’s lifestyles would ensure the destination offers the best events that are similar to those performed during the ancient times. Moreover, culture days are very crucial because visitors like getting tastes of different events, foods, and activities making the functions more enjoyable. On the other hand, the festivals would ensure more revenues are collected improving the country’s economic status (Fox, 2012).

These two events ensure the success of tourism business in Ontario, Orillia and place the city in a better position of winning the market competition. Orillia has a high potential of introducing more tourist attracting activities since the area is not fully utilized. The big beaches would form beautiful lands for construction more sporting grounds, and structures for indoor games. Moreover, Canada has professional engineers and architectures for designing and constructing such structures. These would include modern theatres and entertainment sites for cultural events and festivals. On the other hand, African countries are known for their interesting cultural events. Orillia should contract people from African countries, especially Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa, to offer entertainment during these cultural events. In addition, Orillia destination management should incorporate high technology in their activities to enable fat and effective access of potential visitors’ to their website. This includes opening a customer support website whether customers give their views and recommendations.

Evaluation of Strategic Options and Recommendations

Evaluation of strategic options

Tourism has a significant contribution to the cultural, social, and economic growth of a nation. The increasing market in the tourism industry makes countries improve their tourism activities in order to receive a bigger share. Developing sophisticated marketing strategies ensures a country receives more visitors and maintains them. Two strategies were proposed for increasing tourism activities in Orillia. In ensuring that these strategies meet the required demands, the management alternative options should be devised. The significance of planning is so important during urbanization, in the sense that it cuts across all departments within the government system. Most destinations possessing high profiles and busy travel routes always enjoy a big percentage of customers’ turn over. In some cases, customers fail to give details of their destination since they are not aware of what the destination has to offer. Orillia has a big tourism potential because the management has a clear understanding of the tourism industry, and possess the skills and knowledge of dealing with tourists.

To start with, tourists are very sensitive to the environment of any destination. Orillia should carry out promotions and teaching the surrounding communities on the need for welcoming visitors as they travel in different sites. Moreover, the management should come up with a perfect consultation services that communicate any implementation, or changes within the industry. Full participation in all the programs developed by the organization gives it success acquire the necessary resources aimed at achieving total customer satisfaction. A firm tourism consulting department ensures visitors have an idea of where they are going and the activities they expect to find. According to Weaver & Lawton (2010), a well planned tourism marketing strategy gives an organization an opportunity to build firm foundations for consultation, and development of an excellent relationship with other potential partners (Weaver & Lawton, 2010).

On the other hand, Orillia is a stable city that faces no crisis giving tourists a comfortable environment to enjoy themselves and learn more about the nature. The city should use this as a weapon to encourage people to invite their friends and relatives in the destination. People travel for different purposes, and depending on the reason, the destination should design attractive activities for different purposes. Orillia has well management hotels with big rooms for accommodating even conferences of more than 500 attendants. The destination should consider improving their communication channels so that visitors could easily follow the processing as they relax in the beaches. Moreover, tourism has become very competitive, and Orillia should ensure it offers unique services in order to outdo the emerging destinations in Canada. Global competition also affects the destination due to the presence of other established areas like Tourism Queensland in Australia. The development of more sports activities would be more appropriate because most destinations concentrate with catering activities.

Orillia tourist destination should go in the pace of the advancing technology. The destination should develop a website that sells its services to the potential visitors. DMO websites will play a great role in improving communications among customers and organizations from different locations all over the world. With the latest introduction of many social communication channels like Face Book, Twitter, My Space, and many others, communication will be enhanced. In addition, a program that allows visitors to compete with people from other destinations would be a perfect proposal. Through this program, tourists can register themselves with Orillia team and compete with others online. Moreover, the destination should introduce internet connectivity everywhere within the location. Internet connection will ensure tourists communicate with their friends and relatives, and carry on with their businesses.

Orillia should encourage brand positioning strategy, which ensures they offer only services that are pleasing to their customers in order to attract potential visitors. Moreover, Tourism destination branding provides a significant gap in conducting tourism services. The brand theory plays a significant role in marketing a DMO through critical decision making processes (Pike, 2004). Orillia should put into consideration the functional destination attributes, like the cultural events and sporting events. Moreover, the destination should ensure customers get travel motivation benefits in order to sell the DMO services to their friends and relatives. The marketing manager should focus on functional activities that ensure the DMO faces no political and financial constrains.

Recommendations

Focusing on the future of the tourism industry Orillia should develop innovative marketing strategies. Orillia tourist destination aims at providing quality services to their customers as they enjoy their stay in Canada. The destination has a good value for customers and this gives it an advantage of recording more visits in the future. Improving the customer relationship through tackling customer needs in a more friendly and convenient manner would increase travelling interests. However, the community has not yet achieved its full market potential because tourists still complain of lack of some activities and events. The DMO should implement a tourism network review that caters for all their needs and ensure quick respond to any demand. This will entail coming up with new structures that cater for the future tourism industry. The management at Orillia should aim at having the best managed DMO by the year 2014 in order to cope with the challenging environment.

References

Fox, J. (2012). Culture Days Events in Ontario. Retrieved from:

http://www.orilliapacket.com/2012/09/19/culture-day-events-in-ontario

Jackson, R.T. (2003). VFR tourism: Is it underestimated? The Journal of Tourism Studies, 14

(1), 17–24

Orillia. (2012). Location. Retrieved from:

http://www.orillia.ca/en/doingbusinessinorillia/location.asp

Pike, S. (2004). Destination brand positioning slogans – towards the development of a

set of accountability criteria. Acta Turistica. 16(2): 102-124.

Regional Tourism Profile. (2009). RTO&: Bruce Peninsula, Southern Georgian Bay and Lake

Simcoe. Retrieved from:

http://www.mtc.gov.on.ca/en/research/rtp/2009/RTO7/index.htm

Appendix I: Orillia Destination