Intricacies in targeting visitor groups

Vipula Wanigasekera

The Airport survey reveals that the first choice of the visitors is sun, sea and sand (59 percent) and then the historic sites (11 percent). This is fairly a reasonable indication to find out where industry is placed in its product mix but it hardly offers the preference of the potential visitors, which is the majority.

The target market must be measurable in quantitative terms, specific and time bound

In the tourism arena, we often hear why Sri Lanka is not making efforts to revive the markets in Scandinavia, Australia, or Spain or enter new markets such as Austria, Far East etc. The accessibility is the key issue that overruns the market potential. Questions are also raised to the low level of emphasis on the marketing of some products that are less visited but unique sites or hidden attractions not hitherto known to tourists.

Segmentation and targeting in marketing apply to all products and services in general and in tourism marketing too that rest on the fundamental theory of scare resources calling for tailoring messages being conveyed to specific audiences.

Tourism industry

The tourism industry deals with combination of product and service and a dream!. Tourism marketeers are therefore called dream sellers as the industry compels them to move beyond the framework of a generic product or a service in order to be successful in a fierce competition within and outside.

If the marketing concept revolves around designing and providing products/services to meet customer needs and wants, then it requires to identify and profile the customer. Targeting the marketing efforts would therefore be a focused approach on people most likely to buy their products and services rather than the entire mass market or firing a shot gun.

For instance, advertising is a powerful communication tool for consumer products but the chances that it reaches the target audience effectively is limited firstly and the message that is conveys could be inadequate. As a result, a vast amount of money goes waste. The same could happen in tourism unless the awareness of a destination lies at a very low ebb where advertising becomes necessary.

Prior to targeting the efforts, market segmentation takes. It is a process of taking existing and/or potential customers/visitors (market) and categorizing them into groups with similar preferences referred to as "market segments.

The initial geographic segmentation identified the primary tourism markets for Sri Lanka to be UK, Germany, France, India, Russia and the Middle East while secondary or other emerging markets being China, Japan and Eastern Europe.

Demographic segmentation

The demographic segmentation entails analysis of age, income, family status, and education of existing and potential consumers.

It was revealed that the most number of visitors to Sri Lanka had been in the middle age group of 40-49 years but this has to be looked at in the light of Sri Lanka Tourism's ability to attract other age groups such as honeymoon travelers, adventure travellers, youth travellers etc.

The behavioural aspects such as lifestyle attributes, holiday patterns, preference for activities are also of importance in the segmentation process. The regional travellers are mainly activity and action oriented where they are desirous of engaging in some activity during their holidays. For instance shopping, night life, dining are main attractions for Indian visitors.

Therefore the criteria of arriving target markets depend on existing and future potential of each segment, the strength of competition for each segment, capability of offering a product mix which will be successful in attracting each segment, and the cost of servicing each segment.

Marketeers also take into account the objectives of the promotional campaign, timing of the campaigns, media to be used and so on.

The marketability of each product follows the true level of potential in the beach, mountains, wildlife, historic sites at any given time for a specific period. It is wiser to target the segments that are currently not being served, or served insufficiently rather than go after larger segments.

There is a slight difference between the target market and target audiences. Target market comprises the actual visitors to Sri Lanka. The target audience may well be the actual visitors plus opinion makers who influence the decision to go to a particular destination, select the places of interest to visit. Housewives and young children could well be main influencers in many countries.

Quantitative terms

The target market must be measurable in quantitative terms, specific and time bound. Researchers do comprehensive studies to ascertain these when developing promotional activities.

The travel preferences and desires keep changing not only as human nature but also due to influences by competing countries that come up with special packages, and new attractions. Having elaborated the importance of segmentation and targeting, there is also a demerit on the total dependence on this focus that leaves aside market niches, not necessarily based on geographic segmentation. Free individual travellers, (not back packers), who could be high spenders can get ignored.

They come from all over the world and therefore an overall strategy should need to capture them by various other tools including user friendly websites from which they could extract all the information necessary. This may answer the question why certain markets are not given priority.