Tango or acrobatics: How to capture info groups' memory

Abstract

The global tourism system is highly dependent on travel for leisure and is dominated by mass tourism towards summer destinations. The majority of those travels are organised by tour operators as a member of distribution chain of hotel products; that is, the tour operator creates the holiday package and markets it to travel agencies or online channels, and reservations are processed by local travel agencies as host companies who deal with all the travel processes as a representative or partner of the tour operator. Antalya, the tourism capital of Turkey, is highly dependent on sales from tour operators as a result of the destination’s orientation to mass tourism of sea, sun and sand. Therefore, one of the main marketing actions of hotel marketing executives is to welcome info groups of sales agents from travel agencies and present the hotel property to them so that those agents will recommend their hotel property to their customers and generate sales for the hotel. Those visits are also known as familiarisation trips (fam trips) organised by tour operators and travel agencies, and a minimum of seven or eight hotels are visited by the sales agents in a day to understand the hotel offering in a given destination. However, as a reflection of mass tourism organisation, the welcoming of these groups has also become a mass activity which is performed in similar ways by most hotels. The hotel in this case study looks to do something different so that sales agents will distinguish the hotel from the others to drive sales of the property.