The iconic 'Jolly Fisherman' poster by Frank Newbould, after the original character by John Hassall, was first published by the Great Northern Railway in 1908.
Destination Marketing & Holiday Accommodation
The relationship of small and medium sized businesses to destination marketing has been a recurring theme through my twenty five years as a tourism marketing specialist. I have argued, more times than I care to remember, that every business, regardless of size and regardless of how it connects to the visiting public, has a role to play in sustaining local tourism, whether by adding to visitors' enjoyment through standards of courtesy and service; or by contributing to the destination marketing effort - the subject of this Blog.
Over the years my work has ranged from regional and sub-regional audits, through feasibility studies and marketing planning for substantial private sector operations, to intensive one-on-one advisory sessions with owners of businesses at the smaller end of the spectrum. As an independent adviser with such (former) organisations as the Wales Tourist Board, West Wales TEC and the Welsh Development Agency I reviewed the marketing strategies and delivery of many hundreds of small businesses; and it is in the nature of tourism in the resorts and rural areas of Wales that a proportion of these cases were in the numerically dominant sector: visitor accommodation, whether small hotels, guesthouses or self-catering.
Even now, a quarter of a century since I concentrated my business focus on tourism and leisure, there are proprietors who perpetuate the patterns that were almost ubiquitous at that time. An underlying weakness was a failure to understand the nature of the tourism product. Accommodation operators, for the most part, believed that potential consumers would respond to so-called marketing material that provided detailed information of the facilities and services on offer within their premises. Print material was pretty much homogeneous, consisting of photographs of letting rooms, dining rooms, bars, etc., together with tariffs and assurances of comfort, quality and service. Basic information of this kind is important; but if unsupported it fails to address the fact that for the majority of consumers, holiday accommodation is merely a convenience, the means that gives them access to their chosen destination.
It is true, of course, that a proportion of visitors will be familiar, to a greater or lesser extent, with the area that they intend to visit and will have made their primary decision on this basis. In this circumstance the secondary decision, on accommodation, comes into play and can be influenced by response material that is devoted entirely to individual amenities. But it should be recognised that even repeat markets will at some point have been first-time visitors and have been attracted to a region by any number of factors, including destination marketing. And while it is an aphorism that it is easier to retain existing customers than to attract new ones, new market penetration is essential if business levels are to be sustained in the face of competitive intrusion or the simple dynamics of an ageing and less active customer base.
Even in those distant years BI (Before the Internet) I encouraged the use of the "destination sell" in marketing activity, within the constraints of available space and budget. The objective was (is) to place individual businesses within the wider regional marketing effort and context; to assist in the penetration of new markets; or to remind and re-enthuse potential repeat visitors. Since the advent of the World Wide Web, space and budget constraints are no longer quite so pressing (and I shall have more to say on this in later blogs). Which begs the question: "Why do so many accommodation proprietors still fail fully to promote the natural resources, amenities, history and heritage of their local area?" Even where lip service is paid to the principle of regional promotion the information provided is, more often than not, scant, and in some cases inaccurate or uninformed.
To answer my own question, I believe that at the core of the problem is a legacy of dependence: for more than a century the onus of destination marketing has been taken up and driven by others, so that many of the small businesses that make up 80% or more of tourism operations are slow to exploit the wider product that is at the heart of their marketing offer.
At great risk of over-simplification it is worth examining the roots and branches of this legacy. To do this we need to return to a time long before the overseas package holidays of the 1960s-70s and even before widespread car ownership. These were the days when mass tourism developed exponentially. Domestic tourism was the norm, a hundred and fifty years before a recent assassin of the English language invented the term 'staycation' as if replacement holidays in times of recession were a new phenomenon. And other interests were at work that saw their business growth inextricably allied with tourism. These laid the foundations of much that was to follow. The railway companies were a prime example.
Popular Tourism and Mass Transport
London, Midland & Scottish Railway poster that combines the picturesque with a concise marketing proposition.
Where the few go the many follow. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars were a constraint on the continental Grand Tour, regarded as a rite of passage for the aristocracy and a growing middle class. At the same time the Romantic movement - writers and artists such as the Lake Poets or JMW Turner, new generations of travel writers, amateur antiquarians and the rest - drew the attention of the leisured minority to the spectacular and picturesque within the British Isles. And as the middle classes increased through the years of industrial expansion and as public transport in the form of the railways brought remote regions within reach, leisure travel became a possibility for more and more of the population.
On 5 July 1841 Thomas Cook organised rail transport from Leicester to Loughborough for a group of 570 temperance campaigners. This eleven mile excursion marked the beginning of package travel and the birth of the modern travel agency. It was made possible by a shrewd and mutually beneficial arrangement between Cook and the newly extended Midland Counties Railway. From then on, as the rail network was expanded by a plethora of private companies, the competition for customers became intense. The travel trade had a part to play by following in the footsteps of Thomas Cook, but perhaps of more interest is the efforts of the railway companies themselves to attract passengers. Their solution was the promotion, and even the creation, of tourist destinations.
By the turn of the century many small companies had fallen by the wayside and been subsumed by the more successful, the inevitable outcome of a burst investment bubble and a competitive climate that continued unabated. The railway companies were regional in nature so that it was logical that their marketing should concentrate on passenger traffic for regional networks, a process that continued as companies were merged to create extended spheres of influence. By the twenties the London, Midland Scottish Railway, the London & North Eastern Railway, the Great Western Railway and the Southern Railway were monoliths that competed individually or jointly for holiday traffic by extolling the virtues of destinations that lay within their existing infrastructure. Interestingly, even so early the railways were astute in recognising the marketable potential of individual destinations to discrete target audiences, and the weaknesses of a business model that contained within it an entrenched seasonality - issues which continue to engage tourism marketers today and proof, if proof were needed, that there is nothing new under the sun. The Lake District was presented as a haven of tranquility for discerning visitors. Brighton and Bournemouth and other coastal resorts were promoted for their health and fitness benefits and, at various times, as all-year, all-weather resorts; this following in the track of the inland chalybeate spas. And as holiday-taking devolved downwards through the population, coastal spas evolved into family resorts. The holiday destinations of the United Kingdom were proclaimed from every railway station and from every display panel in every compartment on every train. At the same time the companies emphasised the speed and convenience of rail travel, thus addressing the perceived competition offered by road transport - a coach trade that played a similar part in destination marketing and the creeping intrusion of the motor car.
"The Coronation". Artwork by Tom Purvis for the LNER.
Through the major social changes of most of the twentieth century, well beyond the nationalisation of the railways in 1947 when the names of the companies were enshrined as divisions of British Railways, rail transport was one of the major drivers of tourism through the constant production of posters that ranged from scenic depictions by established academicians, to strikingly stylised artwork from some of the leading graphic artists of their day. Arguably the 1920s and 1930s were the heyday of a medium that emerged as an art form in its own right.
Among the great names were John Hassall and Frank Newbould, whose 'Jolly Fisherman' character has served Skegness for more than a century. But the trend for simplicity, clean colours and clear typography, well rooted in art deco, was fostered and continued by Tom Purvis, Norman Wilkinson, Charles Baker, Leonard Richmond and many more.
From top: Bridlington, Tom Purvis, for LNER; Anglesey, Norman Wilkinson, for LMS; Snowdonia, Charles Baker, for LMS; Cornwall, Leonard Richmond, for GWR.
Primary decision making - choice of destination - was thus influenced from the earliest days of rail travel by advertising on a large scale supported by a travel trade committed to turning prospects into sales. It remained for hoteliers to supply the information necessary for secondary decision making - choice of accommodation. The accommodation brochure was born.
Town Halls, local councils, hotel associations and the travel trade itself cooperated in the production of 'guides' that were designed primarily to service the demand created by third-party advertising and all the multifarious influences that brought a destination to the attention of the public. We have only to think of RD Blackmore and Exmoor, the Brontës and Yorkshire, Daphne du Maurier and Cornwall, or the Newlyn and St Ives schools of artists to realise that tourism trends are swayed by an intricate web of stimuli that has increased with ever more sophisticated channels of communication.
The Changing Dynamics of Destination Marketing
The accommodation brochure served the tourist trade well for many years. Essentially a compendium of hotels and guesthouses, there was little space available for the destination sell. This was scarcely necessary as demand had been created by other means. But by the 1960s and 1970s fundamental changes in leisure travel brought the role of the traditional accommodation brochure into question. Car ownership saw geometric progression after the Second World War, accelerated by rail closures that peaked in the 1960s under the notorious "Beeching Axe", when more than 2,000 stations were removed from the network. The reach of public transport advertising was reduced as the railways' ability to service tourism, and their old dependence on leisure travel, declined. At the same time affordable air travel, and especially the overseas holiday package, gave access to a widening circle of exotic locations and brought unprecedented competitive intrusion. And as the problems for the UK tourism trade mounted, they were exacerbated by entrenchment in a marketing convention honoured by long custom while the market context and marketing environment were changing.
The self-interest of the trade, and the awareness by central and local government of the economic benefits of tourism, prompted a response. The 1969 Development of Tourism Act created a new hierarchy of destination marketing, in some cases absorbing regional trade groups; by the same Act grant-in-aid powers were put in place to assist in marketing at regional level and to encourage improvements in a product that was experiencing an incipient downward spiral, the outcome of declining revenues. The overarching marketing umbrella was the British Tourism Authority, charged with promoting the UK as a tourism destination through overseas offices in co-operation with the national tourist boards of England, Scotland and Wales. The national tourist boards and such sub-regional entities as the West Country Tourist Board were restricted to marketing within the UK and empowered with the supervision of grant-in-aid. It is in the nature of destination marketing that, the larger its scope, the less detail can be devoted to regional and sub-regional attributes and brands; this was especially the case where print was the dominant marketing and response medium. So that under the umbrellas of the BTA and the national boards, regional marketing devolved, in the main, to local authorities working in co-operation with the local tourism trade and subsidised by public funds.
The weakness in the system was that the numerically dominant accommodation sector (and smaller businesses were most numerous of all) exercised undue influence over local marketing decisions. The traditional hotel brochure survived under the compulsion of the trade, with limited space allocated to other components of the tourism product (including the destination itself). With the bulk of LA tourism budgets absorbed by the production and distribution of response material there was, in many cases, very little remaining for aggressive advertising. Less entrepreneurial traders relied over-much on an outmoded system that they had helped perpetuate while, ironically, vociferously criticising the tourist boards for a perceived failure to deliver customers to their businesses.
The more professional accommodation operators had a deeper understanding of the nature of marketing and in various ways worked within the hierarchical context. At macro level, joint marketing consortia approached the market variously: the larger symbol groups offered a degree of homogeneity in product quality, targeted on distinct demographics; more exclusive commercial consortia focused on such product types as the country house hotel; and letting agencies provided a marketing route for the self-catering sector. At the micro end of the spectrum the process of product and market segmentation allowed proprietors to identify specific audiences and tailor their advertising, taking full advantage of specialist interest publications. Even so, the opportunities for the destination sell were still space-limited in traditional advertising and response material.
Progressive businesses embraced more pro-active methods. The guest book provided a database for regular mailshots - news, forthcoming events and seasonal milestones that supported and added texture to the destination marketing context. Press releases generated editorial PR coverage that often extended beyond the doors of guesthouse or hotel and news items were exploited (and sometimes created!) to attract press and broadcast media attention. None of this was rocket science or particularly new, but these techniques percolated down from the macro to the micro, assisted in some degree by the workshops, seminars and advisory schemes delivered by the tourism development hierarchy.
Not all small businesses were reached by the dissemination of marketing good practice, and some remained convinced that it was the task of others to sell their destination to the world at large. And in the meantime, the structure of public sector involvement in tourism has been changing and the responsibilities and funding allocations devolved from central government to the regions has been in flux. Arguably, marketing relies more and more on the initiative and creativity of the individual business, and this includes promoting the destination on which their trade depends.
It is time to consider the World Wide Web.
The Internet and the Destination Sell
The creation and subsequent development of the Internet, and more recently of new integrated platforms and applications, has created enormous additional opportunities for small businesses. Space is no longer a constraint: it is now possible to identify and provide pertinent information to existing or potential markets by partitioning destination information between dedicated web pages supported by a clear navigation structure. Web site visitors can home in on the aspects of a region that appeal to their particular interests: the Internet allows the fullest exploitation of the destination sell, but only when the wider context of marketing and communications is properly appreciated.
The cumulative effect of multiple communication channels should never be underestimated. Marketing by the destination hierarchy is, or should be, informed by identifiable trends; but these trends can also be identified and exploited by the smallest businesses through close observation of mass communications media, and especially broadcast media, where the proliferation of specialist interest programmes has matched the proliferation of channels. Our television sets are inundated, to the point of over-duplication, with programmes that not only address, but create, public interest. History, archaeology, architecture; literature and the arts; wildlife; outdoor activities, sport, and health and fitness (the self-obsession of the age); travel; and even cookery and food: all are indicators of market susceptibility and all can be embraced within the destination sell, ideally when the local is examined in a context that will be familiar to visitors (for example, placing local historical events within a framework of the national or the global).
Specialist interests are the basis of product segmentation that can be incorporated into web site construction. Further, a segmented destination sell generates the kind of keyword-rich and authoritative content that attracts the attention of Internet search engines - see my August blog on Google Panda Guidelines. And, with a little research into the 'purpose of visit', segmentation of the destination product allows segmentation of the customer base and the targeting of specific information using the online mechanisms now available. The mailshots of the 20th Century translate into the e-mail marketing of the 21st, where e-mail address capture is a primary function of the guest book, online incentives and 'calls to action'. Finally, systems such as Google Analytics allow managers to drill down into useful data on site visitors: regions of origin, search terms and keywords, most viewed pages, time spent on site, etc., all of which can inform refinements to marketing activity.
E-mail marketing is just one example of the wider possibilities of an online presence, and these should be considered in far greater detail than is currently the case with many SMEs. Much is made of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) in web design, and it is certainly the case that a web site employing SEO principles will be more disciplined and effective. But it is not enough to rely solely on search engines to drive traffic: this is somewhat akin to the old reliance on third party marketing. Even with high quality content, rich in keywords, and with SEO techniques fully employed, web searches are likely to be swamped by the massive quantity of competing offers that use equally refined SEO methods.
A web presence should be regarded as the springboard for an integrated and pro-active marketing strategy, and the intention must be to drive traffic to this detailed presentation of the product offer. At simplest, all associated marketing activity, including company stationery, in-house signage, menus, brochures, press and directory advertising and the rest should include the web site URL. So much is obvious. Address capture is a pre-requisite for e-mail campaigns which can be generic or speak to specialist interest. Social networks and their potential for viral marketing have been a matter of consuming interest for marketers. And there has been much discussion in the marketing community of the implications of the discernible shift to mobile platforms as smartphones have emerged as the latest 'must have' technology. This last opens up even more possibilities, which will be discussed in future blogs. (And note that the blog itself can be a valuable addition to the marketing armoury.) All of this is dependent on an Internet presence.
Merchandise: A T-shirt design that marries web site promotion with a destination asset and an identified target audience.
The ramifications for destination marketing of a structured web presence by individual businesses are considerable. First and foremost they contribute to the cumulative effect of a multi-channel, multiple platform, communications environment. Secondly, by offering different viewpoints and perspectives, they create interest and engagement, texture and vibrancy - a multi-layered picture that can only benefit the destination as a whole.
I use the terms 'web presence' or 'internet presence' advisably. Although web sites allow substantially more content and greater strategic and tactical possibilities at much lower cost than print, there are, nonetheless, costs involved that can be seen as a constraint by small businesses. Professional web site design is expensive, especially in the start-up phase. Domain name ownership and web hosting are recurring costs. Web sites are most effective, whether in terms of SEO or maintaining the interest of customers, when they are regularly updated; but this adds to costs if undertaken by professionals. The alternative, in-house design and site maintenance, should only be considered if the results can match industry standards. Poor presentation reflects immediately on product perception. Common weaknesses include bad design and typography, poor organisation of information (where, for instance, disparate elements of the sales proposition are compacted into an unintelligible morass), ungrammatical or naive copy, and inferior photography. These potential pitfalls should be born in mind wherever and whenever in-house marketing is attempted.
So, at a time when a web presence is almost considered axiomatic, how is it possible for a small business fully to engage with the online community without incurring costs that reduce, or even outweigh, the benefits? Go to my next article. You have nothing to lose but the chains of received wisdom.
