Marketing Tourism Places (RLE Tourism)

Book excerpt: Tourism is well established as an important part of the new service economy, and the rewards it offers have stimulated intense competition in the tourism industry. Many destinations compete to attract potential tourists, each place having to work hard to distinguish itself from rivals offering similar or alternative attractions. This book, originally published in 1990, explores how destinations invest increasing amounts of time and money into developing and promoting their 'products'. The contributors, from both academic institutes and the tourism industry, provide a multidisciplinary and professional analysis of what can be done to sell tourism places. Using both theoretical and empirical approaches, they give examples from different areas of the industry and evaluate different strategies a destination can adopt for maintaining and increasing its market share. All the contributors emphasize that selling tourism places must be a dynamic activity in which the place products are constantly monitored, so that they can be revitalized, repositioned, or renewed in the market context.