THE INTERNET AND TOURISM MARKETING IN THE CARIBBEAN
Paul F. Wilkinson, York University
Introduction
An important tourism planning need, destination marketing planning, deals with client
groups (segments), appropriate ways of attracting each group, ways to develop/adapt
services, prices, promotional campaigns, performance targets, and altered competitive
conditions (Laws, 1995). A key feature of a successful marketing plan is communication
with potential clients at various stages of the marketing process (e.g., awareness,
information, purchase, feedback). There are numerous forms that this can take (e.g.,
personal contact, television, print media), but a recent innovation has been the use of the
Internet to market various goods and services, including tourism. This paper will examine
the use of the Internet in tourism marketing, using the example of the insular Caribbean.
The Internet
The Internet is a collective term for the WoridWideWeb (WVrW), email, newsgroups,
listservs, relay chat, File Transfer Protocol (FTP), and search tools. While it has the
potential to alter the dependency of peripheral destinations on core suppliers, it is so recent
an innovation that there are virtually no references to it in the tourism literature. It is an
almost-anarchistic, decentralised technology competing with exactly the opposite:
sophisticated, highly centralised multinational computer reservation systems containing
only information sanctioned by system operators.
The Internet allows peripheral destinations to circumvent to some degree, at relatively low
cost, the core suppliers, thus perhaps lessening “the technological ... superiority of the
travel-generating, metropolitan areas” (Lundgren, 1972, p. 86). Also, two concerns (Shaw
& Williams, 1994) in developing-world tourism could be lessened: asymmetrical power
relationships and domination by traditional distribution channels. In particular, the Internet
could overcome a problem (Pearce, 1992) about Murphy’s (1985) advocacy of a
“community approach” to tourism, which emphasises local concerns and participation but
does not show how small communities can effectively market their product to the wider
world and thereby achieve the benefits sought from tourism development. Thus, in contrast
to the past when they were unlikely to have the resources to market themselves widely
(Goodall, 1990; Laws, 1995), local communities, individual enterprises, and national
tourism organizations (NT0s) can use it to join the list of distribution channels. The
specialised and detailed information provided on the Internet also addresses one of the
major factors influencing tourism planning, namely new market understandings: market
segmentation, new market trends, better human relationships, desire for specialised travel
products, and stronger market demand for quality (Gunn, 1994).
The Internet Tourist
The travel decision process (Snepenger, Meged, Snelling, & Worral, 1990) entails
elements leading to arousal: expense, complexity, risk of satisfaction, reflections of
personality (Laws, 1995). This results in “considerable care... [being) invested in the
choice of destinations, with potential tourists undertaking detailed study of brochures,
reading and watching holiday advertising, and visiting travel agencies” (Laws, 1995, p.
48). The pre-travel phase has three activities (each affected by “influencers”): purchase
decisions (advertising, brochures, destination marketing organization [DM0] information),
planning (travel agents, travel writers), anticipation (friends) (Laws, 1995). There is,
however, much customer dissatisfaction with existing tourism information, resulting in
post-consumption product complaints (Ashworth & Voogd, 1994). The Internet is an
alternative to the traditional influencers which provided unsatisfactory information.
The Internet and Caribbean Tourism Marketing
Over 25,000 travel-related advertisements and articles that include WWW and/or email
addresses have been collected since January 1996 from media widely available to potential
Canadian tourists. Because of the volume and complexity of the data set, only three outlets
are discussed here:
• Caribbean Vacation Planner (CVP): an annual advertising magazine published by the
Caribbean Coalition for Tourism, providing information about destinations, hotels, etc.
• Rodale’s Scuba Diving (RSD): a 9-issue per year commercial magazine with a
worldwide focus, but with a large proportion of its articles and advertising dealing with the
Caribbean
• Toronto Star (TS): specifically, the Saturday edition (including a large travel section)
which has Canada’s largest newspaper circulation (750,000).
They target potential tourists with different but complementary approaches: specific
interest in the Caribbean; specific interest in an up-market niche tourism activity; and
general interest in tourism, respectively. Frequency of publication is also clearly different:
annual, nine per year, and weekly. The volume of print output in each edition is, however,
quite similar, although not directly comparable.
Two characteristics the outlets have in common are the recent use of Internet addresses
and their increasing use. The first adoption date for Internet addresses in CVP is clear: 0 in
1995, 7 in 1996, and 79 in 1997. It is unclear for RSD (as back copies could not be
obtained), but the growth has been steady since the beginning of 1996. Although there
might have been some uses prior to January 1996 in TS, the take-off really began in March
1996; while varying weekly, the current pattern may indicate long-term stability or
plateauing.
There are clear trends of the items with Internet addresses in the three outlets:
• large increases in number per year and on average per issue for all three: CVP had 7
items with Internet addresses in 1996 and 79 in 1997; RSD 774 and 1784; and TS 754 and
2661
• large increases in size of total print area of the items for all three: CVP had 850 rnm5 in
1996 and 7712 mm5 in 1997; RSD 65,766 mm5 and 154,809 mm5; TS 214,538 mm5 and
876,984 rnm5
• varying patterns of DM0 representation, with NTOs dominating the CVP and RSD and a
broader range for TS (including regional, provinciaL/state/territorial, and municipal
DMOs)
• growing representation by individual hotels, but little representation by hotel chains
• an expected focus on scuba diving-related addresses in RSD
• strong and growing representation by transportation companies (e.g., air, cruise, rail, bus)
in TS alone
• dominance of travel agent and tour package items in RSD and TS
• a wide variety of other types of items in RSD and TS (e.g., restaurants, villa)
condo/house rentals, car rentals, yacht rentals, festivals, theme parics, travel guides)
• CVP is obviously devoted to the Caribbean, but RSD and TS have wide geographic
coverage, with the Caribbean being significant for both: RSD 200 Caribbean items in 1996
and 613 in 1997; TS 337 and 1380.
There are clear trends in the geographic focus of the Internet addresses:
• broadly-based items dominate TS, largely representing advertisements by travel agents
and tour operators offering airline tickets, cruise packages, all-inclusive hotels, etc.
• CVP has a broad geographic coverage in the 1997 edition
• RSD has a broad geographic coverage, but focuses on major dive destinations
• TS has few items related to specific destinations.
The trends on items that include Internet addresses of NTOs are interesting:
• overall, Caribbean NTOs are remarkably rarely represented, even in CVP (although most
do destinations have private and/or public sector national DMOs): CVP had 1 in 1996 and
11 in 1997; RSD 16 and 33; and TS 0 and 6.
• the only NTOs that are frequently represented (in RSD only) are Bonaire (10 in 1996 and
8 in 1997) and Trinidad and Tobago (6 and 9), both of which emphasise scuba diving.
Conclusion
While the effectiveness of tourism marketing on the Internet has yet to be addressed in this
long-term project, several preliminaiy conclusions can be stated based on the analysis of
the data from the print media discussed here. First, the use of the Internet is clearly
growing rapidly, although it is too early to predict when or if it will plateau. Second, the
Internet is being used by a wide and growing variety of types of actors involved in tourism
marketing. Third, while the array of DMOs using the Internet for marketing is growing,
there is little involvement by Caribbean NTOs. The data from the other media outlets not
presented here reflect very strongly these conclusions. It would seem, therefore, that the
Internet can now be described as a major marketing outlet, but its use is being dominated
by the traditional actors in the tourism sector: airlines, hotels and resorts, travel agents, and
tour operators. If this pattern continues, then NTOs will have lost a potential opportunity to
gain some increased degree of control over their tourism futures.
Virtually all Caribbean destinations now have DM0 WWW sites, but the addresses rarely
appear in the print media examined here (and, similarly, in the other media outlets not
discussed here). Perhaps the DMOs are assuming that potential tourists will find their
addresses by browsing the WWW with a search engine and then visit the sites. Such a
strategy, however, is risky. By analogy, it would be similar to a DM0 having a toll-free
phone number, but not advertising it on the assumption that a potential client will
somehow find it and call for information. Other possible reasons include perceptions about
cost and effectiveness, lack of local expertise, difficulties with maintaining up-to-date
information, and competition from private sector DMOs in the tourist-generating
countries. These and other topics will be examined in future phases of this research,
including image analysis of both the items and the related
Internet sites, the use of an electronic questionnaire to the site providers, structured
interviewers with key informants, and case studies.
References
Ashworth, G., & Voogd, H. (1994). “Marketing of tourism places: What are we doing?” In
M. Uysal (Ed.), Global Tourist Behavior (5-19). New York: International Business Press.
Goodall, B. (1990). The dynamics of tourism place marketing. In G. Ashworth & B.
Goodall (Eds.), Marketing in the Tourism Industry (pp. 259-279). Beckenham: Croom
Helm.
Gunn, C. (1994). “Emergence of effective tourism planning and development.” In A.
Seaton et al. (Eds.), Tourism: The state of the art (pp. 10-19). Chichester: John Wiley.
Laws, E. (1995). Tourist destination management: Issues, analysis and policies. London:
Routledge. Lundgren, J. (1972, Jahrhang). The development of tourist travel systems—a
metropolitan economic
hegemony par excellence. Jahrbuch fur Fremdenverkehr, 20, 86-120.
Murphy, P. (1985). Tourism: A community approach. New York: Methuen.
Pearce, D. (1995). Tourism today: A geographical analysis (2k” ed.). Harlow: Longman..
Shaw, G. & A. Williams. (1994). Critical issues in tourism: A geographical perspective.
Oxford:
Blackwell.
Snepenger, D., Meged, K., Snelling, M. & Worral, K. (1990). Information search
strategies by destination-naive tourists. Journal of Travel Research, 29(1), 13-16.
Contact Information: Paul F. Wilkinson, Faculty of Environmental Studies, York
University, 4700 Keele Street, Toronto, ON, M3J 1P3. Email: eswilkin@yorku.ca Phone:
(416) 736-2100 ext. 22627 Fax: (416) 736-5679 WWW: www.yorku.calacademics/paulw
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ABSTRACTS
of Papers Presented at the
Ninth Canadian Congress on Leisure Research
May 12 - 15, 1999
Acadia University, Wolfville, Nova Scotia
Editor: Paul Heintzman
Assisted by: Karen Naugler and Sean Smith
Printed and bound by Acadia University Printing Services
Copyright © 1999 Canadian Association of Leisure Studies
Organizing Team for the Ninth Canadian Congress on Leisure Research:
Glyn Bissix
Tom Delamere
Paul Heintzman
Scott Hennigar
Susan Markham-Starr
Heidi McKinnon
Neil Munro
Karen Naugler
Brenda Robertson
Jerry Singleton
I
The Canadian Congress on Leisure Research
Is held under the auspices of the
Canadian Association for Leisure Studies
Le Congres canadien de la recherche en loisir
se tient sous les auspices de
L'Association canadienne d'etudes en loisir
BOARD OF DIRECTORS/CONSEIL D'ADMINISTRATION
1996-1999
President/Presidente
Past President/President-sortant
Dr. Edgar L. Jackson
University of Alberta
Dr. Susan M. Shaw
University of Waterloo
Vice-President & Treasurer
Vice-president et tresorier
Secretary/Secretaire
Robert Soubrier
Universite du Quebec a Trois-Rivieres
Dr. Tom Hinch
University of Alberta
Directors/Directeurs
Dr. Linda Caldwell Pennsylvania State
University
Dr. Don Dawson Universite
d'Ottawa
Dr. Wendy Frisby
University of British Columbia
Dr. Colleen Hood Dalhousie
University
Dr. Susan Markham-Starr Acadia
University
Dr. Gaetan Ouellet
Universite du Quebec a Trois-Rivieres
Dr. Lisa Ostiguy Concordia
University
Dr. Bryan Smale University of
Waterloo
Dr. Paul F. Wilkinson York
University
II