Essential Concepts of Tourism, Hospitality and Marketing: Complete Overview

U-1 Tourism

Tourism is defined as travelling away temporarily on overnight trips and visiting places for leisure-related purposes.

The main characteristics of tourism are that it involves travelling away from home, you must spend at least one night away, tourism involves a TGR (tourism generating region) and a TDR (tourism destination region), and along the way, you will be travelling in a transit route. You have participated in leisure activities, experienced a different culture and a different daily routine. You have received information about your destination, either at home or on arrival. You have felt safe, secure, and welcome. You feel that your money was well spent. You have used tourist facilities and hospitality businesses before finally returning home.

U-2 Types of Tourism

• Adventure tourism: Recreational travel undertaken to remote or exotic destinations for the purpose of exploration or engaging in a variety of rugged activities.
• Backpacking: As a backpacker, you are free to do what you want. You only need clothes, a passport, and an independent spirit. You have no itinerary. There is no tour operator to hold your hand. Backpackers are proud that they "rough it." They are free and adventurous.
• Flashpacking: This is the latest development in personal tourism. As a flashpacker, you get the best of both worlds: the joy of real travel, but also luxury accommodation and transport when you want it. Flashpackers are looking for adventure like backpackers, but there is one difference: they have money and they are in their thirties or forties. Independence, without fixed itineraries and travelling during relatively long periods of time to distant and exotic destinations, defines this style.
• Event tourism: This is understood as the displacement of persons interested in taking part in technical, scientific, or professional events, including cultural contact and leisure.
• Sports tourism: Refers to travel which involves either viewing or participating in a sporting event, staying apart from their usual environment. Sports tourism is a fast-growing sector of the global travel industry.
• Eco-tourism: Focuses on socially responsible travel, personal growth, and environmental sustainability. Ecotourism typically involves travel to destinations where flora, fauna, and cultural heritage are the primary attractions. It includes programs that minimize the negative aspects of conventional tourism on the environment and the cultural integrity of local people.

U-3 Hospitality

Hospitality has been defined in two different ways:

• In general terms, it is seen as being hospitable, as the reception and entertainment of guests, visitors, or strangers with goodwill.
• Another way of defining it is when hospitality refers to providing accommodation, food, and drinks.

U-5 Tourism Marketing

Marketing is the process of identifying and targeting particular groups of people with the aim of selling them a product or service.

Actually, marketing is arguably the most important aspect of management. It seeks to satisfy customers' needs.

The principal components of marketing are the product, price, promotion, and place. This is also known as the marketing mix.

• The marketing mix is a business tool used in marketing and by marketing professionals. The marketing mix is often crucial when determining a product or brand's offering, and is often synonymous with the four Ps: price, product, promotion, and place.

U-7 Business of Fun

The business of fun involves all activities that have as a principal aim the fact of amusing oneself.

Theme parks are the principal business of this type of tourism. Theme parks create a demand for other tourism and hospitality services such as hotels, restaurants, or shops.

A good example is PortAventura, which includes a theme park, an aquatic theme park, golf courses, a beach club, and four hotels, each of them with a different thematic concept.

The park is divided into six thematic areas based on different historical civilizations: Mediterrània, Polinesia, China, México, Far West, and SésamoAventura, besides street animations. All the thematic zones have spectacles, attractions, and transport.

U-8 Marketing Hospitality

Marketing is often considered to be "just" the advertising and selling of attractions, transport, accommodation, and entertainment. However, it is much more and includes the development of services, distribution, and also localization.

Through marketing, the right product or service is matched to the right market or people. As hospitality is a service industry, its main products are intangible, meaning you cannot see them physically.

We could say that hospitality marketing involves everything that we cannot sight at a simple view, but at the same time enjoy.

U-9 Tourism and Culture

Tourism development has a profound impact on culture.

In terms of cultural change, it started to foster an understanding of global developments beyond local borders.

It could be argued that in the seventies, many people in the West had become disillusioned with the price of economic growth.

Research has shown that they were also impressed by the way people with limited resources were able to support their lives and their cultures without damaging the environment.

Increasingly, however, we find that this development is overturned as time goes by.

It is true to say that the physical pollution of our environment can be prevented, but when the minds and the culture of a people are polluted, the effects can be long-lasting.

Therefore, it should be clear that sensitivity to the cultural landscape is extremely important in the development of tourism.