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311 Managment Services Articles
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Article List
Building Customer Loyalty in A Global Economy
In the current economic situation developing and keeping customer loyalty is essentially. Recognize that in a global economy customers have many more choices than ever before. Tourism competition is no longer "just down the road." In this new and interlocked world, we can determine tourism and travel competition by a number of options including the cost of travel, the languages spoken and the quality of the total product.
TOURISM & MORE'S "TOURISM TIDBITS" for March 2009
Building Customer Loyalty in A Global Economy
In the current economic situation developing and keeping customer loyalty is essentially. Recognize that in a global economy customers have many more choices than ever before. Tourism competition is no longer "just down the road." In this new and interlocked world, we can determine tourism and travel competition by a number of options including the cost of travel, the languages spoken and the quality of the total product.
Customer loyalty is another way to gain the best possible customer, repeat customers. Not only do repeat customers tend to spend more money but they are often the people who tend to provide the best word of mouth advertising possible. Numerous tourism businesses have developed customer loyalty programs. For example, the airlines frequent flier programs are some of the world's most successful customer loyalty programs. Other tourism businesses such as restaurants and even airport parking lots have replicated these programs. All of these loyalty programs are based on the idea that the more usage of product X makes the customer a special client and provides the customer with add-on benefits. This month's Tourism Tidbits provides you with a host of ideas on how to keep your customers loyal and ways to get them to come back.
Basically there are three ways to develop customer loyalty programs. We may call these: (1) enticement programs, (2) service programs, and (3) communications programs.
Enticement programs A good example of an enticement program is one of the airlines of hotels frequent user programs. These are programs designed around the idea that a business' best customers are to be rewarded with special treatment, favors, or prizes. Other enticement programs are based around freebies such as hotels offering free toothbrushes to their guests or even a free breakfast. If you are going to use an enticement program, keep in mind:
-do what you promise. Enticement programs have been a very successful way to develop customer loyalty as long as the business actually delivers what it promises. Airlines are frequent abusers of enticement programs. They often mislead the public by not carrying through on their promise. Their frequent black-out days, changes of policy and non-seat availability may have hurt airline reputations as much as the program originally helped to build loyalty -be careful not to cancel or cut program benefits. Once the public becomes used to an enticement program, it resents any loss of benefits. If you promise X then deliver X. A withdrawal of benefits may be worse than never having begun the program at all.
Loyalty Service Programs Nothing wins customers over than good service and good value. No matter how good an enticement program is, a lack of good customer service and a poor pricing structure is bound to undercut a customer's loyalty. This is especially true in the hospitality industry, which is an industry that is supposed to be all about service. When considering good customer service, emphasize the following:
_if you do not like people, the travel and tourism industry is not for you. Many hospitality employees see their work as just a job. People who do not enjoy people send off signals that turn our customers off. When hiring new employees, try to find extroverts who enjoy chatting with their customers and who see the travel and tourism industry as a never-ending adventure
-Talk, talk and talk some more. The more we know about our customers and listen to them the more loyal they are. Never be defensive when a customer complains. Instead ask the client what suggestions s/he might suggest and involve the customer in seeking a solution and in fixing the problem.
_Give people more than they expect. Whenever you exceed expectations visitors are not only surprised but also delighted. For example, the Grapevine, Texas police department clearly sees itself as part of the city's economic development team. One of the things that Grapevine PD does is provided many of its officers with a credit card to be used when a visitor or citizen has had a serious problem. Often the good will generated by the Grapevine Police brings people back to town. The principle here is that the little extra touch goes a long way to correcting any past mistake. Another example of this approach is Hawaii's VASH program. This is a program designed to help visitors in need due to an unfortunate mishap. The program has had tremendous success in developing customer loyalty to the state of Hawaii.
_Make your business or community special. One way to inspire people to want to return is offer something that is unique about your business or locale. In the modern world a common complaint from travelers is that they might be in "any place". Promote unique products, stores, experiences, or historical events. Customer loyalty and uniqueness often complement each other.
Communication programs. People are loyal to those who take the time to communicate with them. Communication may come in many ways, via newsletters, birthday cards, emails or telephone calls. The type of communication is almost less important than the fact that the business is communicating at all.
_Birthday discounts are a great way to go. Almost everyone wants to feel special on his/her birthday. Sending out a discount coupon as a birthday gift not only brings people into your establishment but in shopping at your store or visiting your community the person comes to feel that you care about him/her. _Internet newsletters remind people, that you have not forgotten them. The web is great but it does not build loyalty. Newsletters and information packs build such loyalty. Let people know you care by telling them about new products and services that you offer. Ask for feedback and try to create contests, or other 'e-events that permit people to feel that they have a stake in your success.
Create forums where people can spread the word about your product via word-of-mouth. The best advertising is word-of-mouth advertising by a satisfied customer. Develop areas at places where people congregate that allow people to provide feedback and give you suggestions. The suggestions may be useful and the fact and all interchanges help to create a sense of bonding between your customers and you.
The bottom line: People care about people who care about them. Offer a unique product with pleasant customer service at a fair price and people will want to return. Perhaps the Bible said it best when it states "V'Ahvatah l'Reachah Kmochah" which is often mistranslated as "love thy fellow human being as thyself" a better translation might be "when you love your fellow men and women then you are not only being good to them but also to yourself" Be good to your customers and you will win their loyalty.
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Interested in doing research in the area of tourism security?
Announcing Our New Subscription Service!
The Tourism & Security Control Panel
Tourism & More, working with our technology partners at Mnemotrix Systems, Inc., is now offering subscribers an enhanced and indispensable online service. Here is a new part of the "More" in Tourism & More.
This new service offers its subscribers full access to the last 18+ years of our Tidbits Newsletter archives, our News and Newsgroup realtime feed, and our Global Security Research Database for Tourism.
This all new approach to research provides much more than the usual keyword search, with our Strategic Data Fusion research capability, and a simple manual for how to make use of it. All this is available for a modest annual subscriber fee of only $99.99 per year. Corporate memberships are also available.
The aim is to give you best-of-class in strategic data fusion research tools. It is not enough anymore to list a hierarchy of subjects we once wrote about. This new service will allow you to be able to get into the content directly by idea or concept.
The Tourism Tidbits Newsletter has been published since 1990. That is a lot of writing and a lot of issues. If you just want a listing by subject and date you can already find it on our "Archived Tidbits" page. But now we want to give you a subscription service, where for a nominal fee, you can access something that goes much deeper.
Using state-of-the-art in Strategic Data Fusion, you can research the daily news and current events with our real-time news feed, and sift through newsgroup message traffic content of Tourism & Security related newsgroups in the same way. Best of all, we have a focused global Research Database of timely information relevant to Tourism & Security and more.
The cost for this service is US$99 per year. To subscribe to this service, please go to our website at <www.tourismandmore.com> and click on where it says: "subscribe".____________________________________________________________________
What topics would you like to see discussed in Tourism Tidbits?
Please send us a list of topics of interest to you and we will do our best to dedicate future issues of Tourism Tidbits to your needs/desires.
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TOURISM AND MORE'S WIDE RANGE OF SPEECHES AND TRAINING SEMINARS
Please note our all-new special course: Tourism Confronts Terrorism: What You Need to Know to Maintain a Viable Industry in the Face of Terrorism.
Here is a partial list of some of our other most popular topics. All seminars and speeches can be presented in English or Spanish.
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Two Brand New Lectures concerning the World's Economic Crisis:
1) Smoothing out rocky economic roads: What tourism needs to do stay in front of these economically challenging times!
2) Surviving Economically Challenging Times: Best Practice from Far and Wide.
Additionally:
3) Our trained staff of professionals are ready to meet with your board and you to discuss specific strategic planning in this most difficult of times.
Please contact us at tourism@bihs.net for more information regarding costs and available dates.
Also New!!!! How to tourism communities need to work to prevent and recover from natural disasters.
Other lectures include:
-Tourism Confronts Terrorism: What You Need to Know to Maintain a Viable Industry in the Face of Terrorism.
-Training Your Police: Tourism Oriented Policing (TOPs), how it works and why it is essential for a viable tourism industry.
-Getting On Board: Helping Your Police and Other City Employees to be Part of the Tourism Industry.
-Marketing to the Baby-boom Generation, Generation X and beyond.
-New Trends in Tourism Marketing and International Tourism.
-When the Market is Tight and the Economy Is Slow: New Ideas in Marketing.
-Developing a Successful Agricultural and Rural Tourism Industry.
-Something from Nothing: The Art of Creating New Attractions.
-Tourism Ethics: Linking the Wisdom of Moses to Your Tourism Product.
-Understanding Tourism Statistics: When is a fact a fact and when is it not? How to present data to the media.
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TOURISM ON-LINE/EDUCATION
TOURISM SECURITY. The George Washington University's Tourism Destination Management and Marketing Certificate Program announces the launch of "Safety and Security for Tourism Destinations: Achieving a Safe and Secure Tourism Environment". This is a course designed to help tourism professionals understand the importance of safety and security within a destination, as well as provide them with the "tools" needed to create a secure environment for both visitors and residents.
World-renowned travel safety and security expert, Dr. Peter E. Tarlow, has developed this course by drawing on his wealth of experience and the growing number of publications in this area. The course is available worldwide via Internet-based distance learning. For more information please email mailto:dmpdl@gwu.edu.
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Tourism Journal Seeks Papers
Tourism Review aims to contribute to a deeper understanding of tourism as an interdisciplinary phenomenon and to provide insights into developments, issues and methods in tourism research. As the official journal of AIEST, the International Association of Scientific Experts in Tourism, it promotes an exchange of scientific concepts and research findings across different cultures and language barriers as well as serving as a platform of results, in particular, for young researchers.
The journal provides original, multidisciplinary contributions on:
tourism demand and its development in a socio-economic context
managing tourism products and services in a destination network with its social, ecological and economic interrelations
markets and their institution in transition.
The Editorial Board of Tourism Review welcomes articles of between 3,000 and 7,000 words and shorter ‘discussion’ papers of no more than 2,000 words. For full details on how to submit, please consult the Author Guidelines, which can be found at <http://listmanager.emeraldinsight.com/t/11880/1531120/504/0/>http://www.emeraldinsight.com/tr.htm, or contact:
Co-Editor-in-Chief:
Prof. Dr. Christian Laesser, University of St. Gallen, Switzerland
E-mail: christian.laesser@unisg.ch
The Publisher:
Valerie Robillard
Emerald Group Publishing Limited
BOOKS ON TOURISM
1) Event Risk Management and Safety (ISBN 0-471-40168-4) by Peter E. Tarlow, published by John Wiley & Sons. Presenting theory and practical applications. To purchase this book, visit http://www.wiley.com/ or http://www.amazon.com/. If you would like Dr. Tarlow to speak or train people in this area, please contact him at mailto:tourism@bihs.net.
2) Restoring Tourism Destinations in Crisis by Dr David Beirman: Published By Allen & Unwin (Australia & SE Asia) and CABI Publishing North America/ Europe 2003. For more information contact the author at mailto:david@aicc.org.au.
3) Leisure Travel: A Marketing Handbook, by Stanley Plog, Pearson Prentice-Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ, 2004. It's available through the website of Pearson Prentice-Hall for $25.
4) Tourism in Turbulent Times. Toward Safe Experiences for Visitors. Edited by Jeff Wilks, Donna Pendergast, and Peter Leggart. Published by Elsevier.
5) Tourism Security & Safety, from Theory to Practice. Edited by Yoel Mansfeld and Abraham Pizam, published by Elsevier.
6) The Economics of Tourism Destinations, by Norbert Vanhove, Published by Elsevier
7) Beach Safety and the Law, Edited by Jeff Wilks published by Queensland
(Australia) Law Society
8) Media Strategies for Marketing Places in Crisis, by Eli Avraham and Eran ketter Published by Elsevier
9) Tourism Development: Growth, Myths and Inequalities. Burns, P. and Novelli M. eds. (2008). Wallingford: CABI
10) Tourism Management: Analysis, Behavior and Strategy, edited by Woodside and Martin, published by Cabi, London, England
11) Tourism and Mobility, Burns, P. and Novelli M. eds. (2008). Wallingford: CABI.
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"Readiness Resource Group" (RRG)
We offer executes programs in Emergency Command Center operations/design, Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Planning under natural disasters, life safety, terrorism and health challenges. Have you thought about food safety? Pandemic planning? How to protect employees and the business model from internal and external threats? Consider RRG for gap analysis reviews and training on existing plans. www.readinessresource.net or shepherd@readinessresource.net "
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Some Upcoming Tourism Conferences
We invite you to submit your conferences to Tourism Tidbits. Please submit request in the form found below. Please note, Tourism Tidbits has received a number of complaints asking why '"My conference" was not listed.
If you do not tells us, then, we cannot list the conference. We are happy to list all conferences about which we are informed. Please follow the format below when sending us a conference announcement. Thank you!
Unless otherwise stated, English is the conference language.
March 2-3, 2009
Tobago Tourism Security Summit
Marcb 4-6
Chicago, IL
2009 Illinois Governor's Conference on Tourism: The Road Ahead
For more information please contact Zachary Morrison at: zachary.morrison@edelman.com
March 15-17, 2009
La Crosse, Wisconsin
Wisconsin Governor's Conference
For further information please call 1-608-266-3978
March 24, 2009
Indianapolis, IN
Hoosier Hospitality ConferenceFor more information please contact Cathi Tanner Wineland, Association of Indiana Convention and Visitors Bureaus at: cathiwineland@comcast.net or call 317-466-1250
April 4-5, 2009
Rhodes Hall Plantation Resort, Green Island, Hanover, Jamaica, W.I..
Caribbean VeggieFest and Wellness Conference
(Wellness Tourism: A Global phenomenon with a Caribbean Flavor)
For more information please contact
Sharon Parris-Chambers
President, Positive Tourism Network
876-381-1591 ~876-957-9243
svpc58@yahoo.com or www.positivetourism.com
May 7-9
Havana, Cuba,
Turicencia: Convocatoria Internacional
Language: Spanish
For more information please write to < info@turiciencia.org
May 11-15
Palm Springs, CA
CFED West Conference and Expo,
For more information please contact: events@thehalocorp.com
May 13-15, 2009
CHME 18th ANNUAL RESEARCH CONFERENCE
Brighton, England
May 13-15
Bahrain
Bahrain International Travel Expo
For more information Contact Natasha Ridley @ natasha@bitebahrain.com
June 15-18, 2009
Singapore
BEST EN Think Tank IX: The Importance of Values in Sustainable Tourism
June 13-14, 2009
Kingston, Jamiaca
Caribbean VeggieFest, Spa & Wellness Conference
(Wellness Tourism: A Global Phenomenon with a Caribbean Flavour)
For more information please contact: Sharon Parris-Chambers <svpc58@yahoo.com>
June 20-23, 2009
Kos Island, Greece
Tourism in a Changing World: Prospects and Challenges
June 21-23, 2009
Honolulu, Hawaii
TTRA's Annual Conference
More information at http://ttra.com/hawaii2009.html
July 6-8, 2009
GOLD COAST, AUSTRALIA
THE INTERNATIONAL EVENT MANAGEMENT SUMMIT
For more information: "Australian Centre for Event Management" acem@uts.edu.au
Aug 5-7, 2009
Bonita Springs, Florida
15h Annual Florida Festivals and Events Association
For more information please visit www.ffea,con
Sept. 6-, 2009
Bournemouth
Marketing Innovations for Sustainable Destinations: Operations, Interactions, Experiences. For more information please contact Dr Alan Fyall at: afyall@bournemouth.ac.uk
Sept. 11-14
Kos Island, Greece
Conference on Tourism in a Changing World: Prospects and
Sept., 17th and 18th
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About the Author:
Dr. Peter E. Tarlow is the President of T&M, a founder of the Texas chapter of TTRA and a popular author and speaker on tourism. Tarlow is a specialist in the areas of sociology of tourism, economic development, tourism safety and security. Tarlow speaks at governors' and state conferences on tourism and conducts seminars throughout the world and for numerous agencies and universities.
If you know of anyone else who might enjoy "Tourism Tidbits," please send his/her email address to mailto:tourism@bihs.net. Please let us know of any topic that you would like to see covered by "Tourism Tidbits." We invite others to submit articles for consideration for publication.
You are welcome to reproduce "Tourism Tidbits" or any part of "Tourism Tidbits" with proper citing. We hope that you will see "Tourism Tidbits" as a place where tourism, visitor, and travel professionals exchange ideas and information. "Tourism Tidbits" does not offer or provide specific legal or financial advice. Our goal is to provide a "review" for industry personnel and discuss provocative issues. We remind all readers that every specific business decision should be made only after you have done the proper research. The author(s) accept(s) no responsibility for any loss due to any information published in "Tourism Tidbits."All articles sent to "Tourism Tidbits" and accepted for publication are owned by "Tourism Tidbits" and may be subjected to editorial review and rewriting (with permission of the author). All questions about "Tourism Tidbits", suggestions, or cancellations should be addressed to Dr. Peter E. Tarlow at tourism@bihs.net.
--
Dr. Peter Tarlow
1218 Merry Oaks,
College Station, Texas, 77840-2609, USA.
Telephone: +1 (979) 764-8402.
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What’s the 311MS on Thought Leaders?
At 311MS, we leverage our Thought Leader’s creative and innovative potential through facilitated sharing and personalized coaching. Our Thought Leaders are recognized professionals who excel in their business sector, exceed in meeting their client/customer needs, and understand the complexities of their field.
Do you need more information about these people?
Would you like to use their services?
Contact Us to see how we can help connect you!
Wikipedia definition:
Thought leader is a buzzword or article of jargon used to describe a futurist or person who is recognized among their peers and mentors for innovative ideas and demonstrates the confidence to promote or share those ideas as actionable distilled insights (thinklets)......This term can also be applied to an applied research Center of Excellence, or company - often a small business that integrates professional ethics with highly-effective leadership development.
Thank you to our newest Thought Leader, Bill Petersen, who helped us verbalize this overview.
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