Tourism Marketing Plan: How to Avoid Tactics

Hey there,

I’m back with another Tourism Marketing Problem, to find out if you are also facing this issue that I find with a number of my clients. 

This problem is when tourism owner and operators who:

do a lot of TACTICAL marketing and sales activities that don’t result in growing their business.

Essentially they don’t create a tourism marketing plan at all.

They do a whole lot of activities, they are doing a lot of stuff – and in the end, there isn’t a road map or a framework that got them to achieve ANYTHING.  

Those activities just become tactics, that don’t all work together to help fix major business issues nor do they capitalize on opportunities.

This can happen to every business, its when we get distracted by a lot of things, instead of focusing on a few problems (and opportunities) and build strategies to address them.

Unfortunately, this leads to just wasted time, money and effort.

 Solution?  Create A Tourism Marketing Plan Every Year.

All you need is some FOCUS a framework or a marketing plan it doesn’t need to be complicated either. 

Here are a few tips for key inclusions for your marketing plan:

Goals – including business, guest, profit and purpose goals

Key Issues and opportunities– 3-5 maximum explained in one sentence

Strategies and tactics to address the key issues and opportunities

Measurement – how you are going to measure the effectiveness of your plan and reaching your goals?

The goal here is you want to see progress instead of seeing small, inconsequential steps that aren’t fixing your issues.

So what about you? Are you stuck in the tactics instead of building broader strategies to address your business issues and opportunities? What is your approach to your tourism marketing plan?

Please comment below we would love to hear from you! 

If this resonates with you, we have a great community group of tourism professionals in hotel, tour, and transportation businesses.

We would love you to join us, its completely free and you can contribute to the conversation here. And Check out our weekly tips to address problems like this and more. 

Do you want to know how to waste money on advertising? This video link explains the problem.

For more videos about common tourism marketing problems, you can find them all with this link.  

Strategy not tactics - Showing the value of a Tourism Marketing Plan instead of Tactics

About the Author

Dorene Wharton is a tourism strategist, marketer, coach, copywriter and full-time traveler with a 25-year career working in all areas of marketing and sales. She left her corporate job with Fortune 500 hospitality brands to start Travel Life Media to help hotels, tour, attractions and event companies improve their marketing, and live their brand with purpose.
Dorene Wharton