A sociological study done by Erik Cohen reveals that tourism campaigns persuade tourists by tapping the different factors that lead tourists to visit places. Such factors include low costs and high benefits associated with the tourist package. 1 In order to know how tourists from the United Kingdom may be persuaded to visit Thailand, a sharp understanding about the typical characteristics of the kind of tourist in question should be done. A recent study by Expedia reveals that Britons are labeled by international tourism agencies as the most disliked around the world.
1 What accounts for this label is the fact that British tourists are characterized as ill-behaved and incompetent in speaking the language of the country they are visiting. This can say something about the preferences of the tourists. If they like to travel in a place where they need not be competent in a foreign language, and they can act as ill-behaved as tourism agencies label them, then what one does to persuade these tourists to visit Thailand is to invite them in a place where such wanting can be satisfied.
This is to say that the packaging of the social community of Thailand’s tourism spots needs some more work. But this can only be done in promotional campaigns. When the tourists get to interact with the Thai, things would still be the same. The Britons would still be labeled as ill-behaved and language incompetent (if the Expedia survey would be taken into consideration as factual). That is why a whole new tourism program must be offered. The Britons can only be persuaded to visit Thailand if the places to journey in are historical, nature and scenic spots.
3 1. Cohen, Erik. (2002). The Sociology of Tourism: Approaches, Issues, and Findings. Annual Review of Sociology, 10, 373-392. 2. British ‘world’s worst tourists’, BBC News, 2002, retrieved 10 September 2006, <http://news. bbc. co. uk/1/hi/uk/2137729. stm> 3. Thailand Tour Packages and Thailand Holiday, HotelThailand, retrieved 10 September 2006, < http://www. hotelthailand. com/tour/index. html> However, despite the choice of a tourist destination spot, so much depends on the promotional aspect of marketing, where they key to persuasion lies.
1 As Kan says, ‘No business can survive the long run without some form of consistent advertising’. 2 Steps should be taken to strategize the promotional campaign of packaging Thailand to Britons. Kan advises the intensive use of the Internet. 3 Websites must be set up with high traffic. These websites must have quality photos of the tourist destination spots. The gallery should be wide so that the Britons can see through a digital window the different spots that they can visit. Since the main attractions are historical, scenic, nature spots, the photos must be about them.
Hence, we will least expect images showing the famous bars of Thailand, the red district, the floating market, or in other places where there is high interaction between normal people with UK tourists. The websites must also contain high interactivity, because this is one of the main motivations for Britons to visit the site repetitively for updates, hence increasing the possibility that these tours will be remembered. It is the goal of advertising to make consumers remember the product. Everything must begin by choosing the variety of media to use.
3 The right kind of medium must fit the right kind of message and receiver. Since tourism is a product that requires prospective consumers to see immediately the prospective sites for visiting, the following media are recommended: photography, television advertisements, print advertisements, Internet campaigns. Print advertisements include the distribution of brochures, the publication of 1. Promotion (marketing), Wikipedia, 2006, retrieved 10 September 2006, <http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Promotion_(marketing)> 2.
Kan, Davdi, Office Promotion for Tourism Business, Nexusion, 2005, retrieved 10 September 2006, <http://www. nexusion. com/article. html? id=22763&p=> 3. Advertising, Wikipedia, 2006, retrieved 10 September 2006, <http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Advertising> promotional articles in newspapers, and the pasting of posters on walls. 1 The Thailand tourism campaign should also learn from the Connecticut advertising campaign, whose main goal was to increase tourism in New England. 2 They re-packaged the tourism program by adding emotional rewards to the tour.
Therefore, in order for Britons to be persuaded to go to Thailand, value-added incentives should be offered to the spiritual and emotional satisfaction of the visitors. Such things include going to Buddhist temples, where the Britons can take pictures of the statues of the Buddha, and going to nature spots considered as sacred. Through this, they can experience peace and solitude with nature. They hear the gushing of the stream, the twittering of the birds, the falling of leaves, and the like. These things do not appeal so much on the visual sensation but more on the emotional sentiments of the tourists.
In Malcolm Crick’s anthropological study, it is revealed that the representations of international tourism include the use of bright colors in brochures, the showing of the different aspects of cultural specialty present in places to be visited, nature spots, unique cuisine, unique artistic museums, historical landscapes, and many others. 3 Tourism has always been about spectacles. By adapting the Connecticut tourism program strategy, one only needs to appeal to the wants of the Britons to take a rest from their work in order to indulge in emotional satisfaction.
By attaching the value of emotional satisfaction with the Thailand tour, they can be persuaded to go there. After all, tourists are not only looking for fun, in the shallowest sense of the term. What they are after for is education of the senses. 1. Everything is possible: print ads, Hewlett-Packard Development Company, 2006, retrieved 10 September 2006, <http://www. cdc. gov/tobacco/posters. htm> 2. CCT: Tourism Campaign, Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism, 2005, retrieved 10 September 2006, <http://www. cultureandtourism. org/cct/cwp/view. asp? a=2128&Q=302596>
3. Crick, Malcolm. (2001). Representations of International Tourism. Annual Review of Anthropology, 18, 307-344. Timothy Forsyth’s study on the case of sustainable tourism reveals that tourists are not willing to go in places with news about deaths and wars. What they are after are peaceful places. Battles and military encounters scare them. Therefore, places with high cases of crime and violence are hopeless in terms of their tourist campaigns. In such a case, they must then cater to professional tourists who would be interested in such events, like media people.
The case of Thailand, however, reveals that there are much military uncertainties. What tourism program should do is to make the tourism package attractive to professional media personalities. 1 Extensive campaign is also something that one must learn from the tourism program strategy and planning employed by the Tourism Ministry of Jerusalem. The war in Jerusalem, obviously, has led to a slump in its tourism industry. However, steps were taken to solve the problem, jumpstarting the industry back. The Thailand tourism should follow suit.
What must be done are the following: raising of tourism budget, and usage of funds in tourism campaigns in the countries of prospective visitors. This form of marketing and promotional strategy is different because the campaign is intensive and extensive. Intensive because it is wide in range, involving a lot of people, and tapping several media, like television, radio, photography, newspapers, brochures, door-to-door campaigns, and the like. It is also extensive because the campaigning personnel go directly to the territory of the customers or prospective visitors. 1. Forsyth, Timothy. (1997). The Case of Sustainable Tourism.
The Geographical Journal, 163(3), 270-280. 2. Krawitz, Avi. Hotels call for tourism campaign, Jerusalem Post, 2006, retrieved 10 September 2006, <http://www. jpost. com/servlet/Satellite? pagename= JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull&cid=1154525962470> The tourism campaign manager should also be able to exploit the advantages of different media. If he or she uses radio, then he or she must make sure that the message is well-crafted. 1 If the message is shoddy, no single Briton would dare listen to the radio advertisement. First of all, advertisement is all about arresting human consciousness’s desire for power.
Shoddy advertisements mean that the message has been crafted with little budget. Little budget means little money. Little money translates into the conclusion that the creator of the advertisement, the one advocating for the product (in this case, Thailand tourism) does not have enough economic resources to fund the advertisement. People do not want to be attached with shoddy advertisements because they always wanted the feeling that when they use a product that has been advertised by well-crafted messages, then they also share in the power of the message and product.
2 Therefore, a primary strategy of an advertiser of Thailand tourism to United Kingdom tourists would be to request for a higher budget from the financial manager of the corporation the campaign manager is working in. Afterwards, the campaign manager hires an art director for the radio advertisement, an announcer, talents, mixers, and other personnel who are working in the radio industry. A well-crafted radio advertisement means that there are distinct voices heard. Therefore, the talents to be used must have different inflections of voices, different pronouncements of the same words, and different tones of speech.
A speech therapist may be needed to cure husky and shrill voices. We do not want to shun away British listeners. 1. Relating Radio, Communities, Aesthetics, Access, Radio Revolten, 2006, retrieved 16 September 2006, <http://72. 14. 253. 104/search? q=cache:BQmrajPhPvYJ:www. kulturstiftung-desbundes. de/media_archive/1137665332970. pdf+radio+aesthetics&hl=tl&gl=ph&ct=clnk&cd=1&client=firefox-a> 2. Glaser, Tom, The Power of Advertising, St. Petersburg Times, 2001, retrieved 16 September 2006, <http://www. sptimes. com/News/051001/NIE/The_power_of_advertis.
shtml> We need them to listen to the tourism campaign, so what must be done is to arrest their attention by adding up quality voices, good music, and flattering punch lines. 1 If the campaign manager decides to reach the British audience through the use of a newspaper advertisement, then he or she follows the same process of requesting the necessary budget for the production. 2 In this kind of campaign, the personnel needed are photographers, make-up artists, set designers, copywriters, article writers, and even art director.
There should be an efficient team that will be made out of this. It is important because there are a lot of players. The images shown must be panoramic, since the product is a place—Thailand. 3 The photographs must be shot in a wide-angle lens. It should be colorful, because if silver gelatin prints are used, then the eyes of the readers will not be attracted to the images. The goal is to arrest the visual interest of the prospective UK tourists. Copywriters have an important role. Here, they decide on the punch line of the campaign. The shorter the line, the better.
This is for prospective UK tourists to remember quickly what a Thailand tour may offer. Composing the short line—possibly about three words only—may take up for months. Much research is needed for the market. The campaign manager must know the right words that the target market wishes to hear. Article writers must write in perfect grammar. They also must have a know-how in British style of speaking and writing English. If they are not knowledgeable in this, then there is the trouble of crafting the message well but not captivating the attention of the target market. 1.
Hollick, Julian, The Aesthetics of Radio as a Creative Art-Form, 2002, retrieved 16 September 2006, <http://www. ibaradio. org/aboutus/staff/jchessay. htm> 2. Nelson, Sean, The Aesthetics of the Idea, 2001, retrieved 16 September 2006, <http://www. thestranger. com/seattle/Content? oid=9077> 3. Orientalist Aesthetics, retrieved 16 September 2006, <http://www. ucpress. edu/books/pages/9548. html> If the television medium is used, the campaign manager must decide what the concept of the advertisement should be. 1 Footage must be shown regarding the different places in Thailand.
There should be high-quality video images. Movement and the persistence of vision must be taken into tight consideration. Viewers want to see a lot of movements, therefore we expect traveling shots, like dolly shots and handheld camera movements. A creative director must then be chosen. He or she is the supreme artistic authority of the television advertisement. He assigns tasks to the campaign team. He decides upon the mise-en-scene, cinematography, editing, sound, and concept of the television advertisement. Mastery of the medium is of utmost importance.