The purpose of this chapter is to evaluate the effectiveness of marketing communications in promoting tourism on the Greek island of Myconos. The research evaluates the effectiveness of the marketing communications used by public bodies to promote Myconos in Europe. The research location was the airport at Myconos. The researchers used a probability sampling technique in the form of stratified random sampling, since the population used for the research was multinational. Four-hundred questionnaires were gathered from a research population of 8000. The percentage of arrivals pertinent to each subset (tourist population divided by nationality) was compared with the total number of tourists who arrived on Myconos from the countries constituting the sampling frame, and the number of questionnaires to be given to each of the subsets was calculated. The study shows that marketing communications had a positive effect on the overall business performance and improved it noticeably. Marketing communications used by public bodies to promote Myconos were effective as they increased tourism arrivals and influenced the majority of the tourists to visit it. In addition to this, the study shows that there are factors such as tourists' origin, age, and annual income that affect the effectiveness of marketing communications. It also identified that tourists value a marketing strategy that involves analytical information about the tourism destination, as they stated that brochures, guidebooks, and the Internet influenced them to a great extent.
Top1. Introduction
Marketing communications has been researched extensively in the last decades and it is very important because it affect the marketing performance. Marketing communications are the promotional components of the marketing mix that involve the communications among an organization/firm and its target audience that have a direct impact in the organization’s marketing performance (Drucker, 1975; Jobber, 2004).
Marketing is an essential part of tourism services (Borden N, 1964). Marketing communications play a crucial role in Tourism. An analytical and broad marketing communications strategy is necessary for a successful and sustainable tourism activity (Gummesson, 2007).
According to Kreag (2001) tourism expands very rapidly and is one of the largest economic sectors in the world. Moreover tourism has a great economic impact at state, local and national levels. That impact can be translated in employment opportunities, Town’s tax revenues and so on (Haralambopoulos and Pitzam, 1996).
Tourism also affects directly the economy of a country. According to Nilanjan (2012) tourism has emerged as a new mantra for alternative economic development. Tourism concept has been tested and already applied for alternative development of a nation and proved to give positive result. Greece’s economy is highly dependent on tourism, as tourism is major source of foreign exchange and also provides the 16% of the Gross National Product. Due to increased competition and limited financial resources, the public sector needs to utilise marketing strategies in order to satisfy the needs of their markets (Kitchen and Schultz, 2001).
Despite the importance of the issue, the majority of studies concerning the effectiveness and the impact of marketing communications in tourism industry are conducted in a theoretical and not in a practical level (McCarthy,1996). In addition to this they focus only in one marketing communication tool and its effect. Moreover, while there are studies that focus on the economic impact of tourism there is a lack of studies that examine the effectiveness of marketing communications used by the public sector(Ministry of Tourism, Municipalities and Prefectures) (Haralambopoulos and Pitzam, 1996).
Therefore, it will be valuable to examine the effectiveness of the marketing communications in Tourism industry as important insights will be provided to both practitioners and researchers. Furthermore, feedback will be provided regarding the effectiveness and the choice of the marketing communications used that will allow the re-evaluation of the marketing communications strategy.
The overall objective of this research is the evaluation of the effectiveness of the marketing communications used by the public bodies in order to promote Myconos Island as a tourism destination in Europe. An amount of more specific aims derive from this overall objective in order to examine the profile of visitors, to examine the effectiveness of the marketing communications used the public bodies in order to promote the Island of Myconos in Europe. Finally the research provides a comparison of perceived effectiveness of marketing communications between Central Europe (Holland and Germany) and Scandinavian tourists.