1、中文 3780 字 标题： Tourism and hospitality marketing: fantasy, feeling and fun 原文： Experiential marketing has become a cornerstone of many recent advances in areas such as retailing, branding and events marketing, but with attempting to sell an experience of a place through relating it to the lifestyle c
2、onstructs of consumers. For many years we have discussed the characteristics of tourism and hospitality products, which suggest that marketing within the sectors is different to many other industries, as purchase decisions are made on the basis of projected and perceived images, rather than prior ex
3、perience. However, despite the amount of literature being written on these perceived differences, most marketing in the sector relies heavily on traditional marketing concepts, and it is often difficult to discriminate tourism and hospitality approaches to marketing from those advocated for other co
4、nsumer products. Tourism and hospitality has become a major economic activity as expectations with regard to the use of our leisure time have evolved, attributing greater meaning to our free time. The evolution of tourist behaviour encourages both change and the emergence of new meaning (Bouchet et
5、al., 2004). This results in marketing having potentially a greater prominence in tourism and hospitality, than in other industries. Potential that is not always fully achieved (Morgan and Pritchard, 2002). The key reason for this failing is that in the main marketing for tourism and hospitality has
6、been focussed not on the consumer, but on the destination or outlet, with marketing strategies being related to the products offered (Williams, 2000, 2002). As marketing within this sector has evolved however, the offer has become increasingly less important due to the enormous heterogeneity of cons
7、umer motivation and behaviour. The result is that firms and destinations within this sector need to redefine their strategies to reflect these changes. Studying the behaviour of consumers has become increasingly complex, and it is fair to argue that tourism and hospitality by its very nature, should
8、 be in the vanguard of research into contemporary consumers (Williams, 2002). Tourism and hospitality offers a multitude of venues in which people can consume. Bars, restaurants, hotels, theme parks, casinos and cruise ships all operate as “Cathedrals of consumption” (Ritzer, 1999) offering increasi
9、ngly complex consumption opportunities to increasingly complex consumers. Tourism and hospitality has developed into one of the most important global economic activities, due in part to a combination of a transformation of offers and increasingly postmodern demand. These changes mean that tourism an
10、d hospitality consumption has evolved to become more qualitative, more demanding, and more varied (Bouchet et al., 2004). Anecdotal evidence delivered through media coverage, would suggest that contemporary consumers are self-indulgent, pleasure seeking individuals, easily dominated by marketers and
11、 advertisers, who act like sheep in the ways they mimic referent others. However, the reality is obviously much more complex than such a scenario suggests. Contemporary consumers are as likely to be driven by thrift as to they are to be hedonistic, they use consumption to make statements about thems
12、elves, they use consumption to create their identities and they develop a sense of belonging through consumption. For many people it is through consumption that relationships are formed, for example, colleagues enjoying a drink after work or children hosting their birthday parties at McDonalds, enab
13、ling them to define their circle of friends .Consumption also plays a part in finding fulfilment, developing creativity and expressing their individual abilities. Clearly such a complex phenomena cannot be easily understood. Recent arguments have been sounded that aspects of contemporary tourism and
14、 hospitality consumption have reflected the phenomena of postmodernism. Whilst many believe postmodernism to be a meaningless intellectual fad, inaccessible to many involved in marketing within our sector, others agree that there are worthwhile insights to be gained from the debate on the post-moder
15、n condition and its consequences for tourism and hospitality consumption and marketing. I do not intend to discuss at length the use of post-modern discourse in tourism and hospitality marketing as I have exercised it in previous work (Williams, 2000, 2002). The term postmodernism refers to a break
16、in thinking away from the modern, functional and rational, and during the last couple of decades it has spread across all domains of knowledge, including marketing. The key concepts of post-modern marketing are fragmentation, indeterminacy and distrust of universal discourse, but by eschewing modern
17、ism it introduces a radically new and different cultural movement which coalesces in a reconceptualisation of how we experience and explain our world. In terms of experiential marketing two aspects of the post-modern discourse are most relevant, hypereality and image. Hypereality is one of the most
18、discussed conditions of postmodernism, and refers to the argument that reality has collapsed and has become image, illusion, simulation and simulacra (copies for which no original exists). Hyperreality refers to a blurring of distinction between the real and the unreal in which the prefix “hyper” si
19、gnifies more real than real. When the real is no longer a given but is reproduced by a simulated environment, it does not become unreal, but realer than real, to the extent it becomes what Baudrillard (1993, p. 23)refers to as “a hallucinatory resemblance of itself”. In postmodernism, with the adven
20、t of hyperreality, simulations come to constitute reality itself. This scenario is exemplified throughout the tourism and hospitality industry. Baudrillard himself used the example of Disneyland, arguing it is more real than the USA itself. A point reinforced by Venturi (1995, p. 67) who suggested “
21、Disneyland is nearer to what people want than what architects have ever given them. Disneyland is the symbolic American utopia”. In postmodern society people have become fascinated by signs and as a result, they exist in a state where signs and images have become more important than what they stand
22、for. The result is that todays consumers consume imagery and do not focus on what the images represent or mean. As Miller and Real (1998, p. 30) argue “we live in a world where the image or signifier of an event has replaced direct experience and knowledge of its referent or signified”. While it is
23、accepted that there are problems with investigating tourism and hospitality marketing through a postmodern orientation, it clearly encompasses a broad range of consumer experiences. In addition it has the potential to reframe our thinking about marketing practice in an increasingly fragmented global marketplace.
