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Tourists The origin of the word “tourist” date back to 1292 AD. It has come from the word ‘tour’. A number of experts have defined the term:”Tourists are the voluntary temporary travelers, traveling in the expectations of pleasure from the novelty and change experienced on a relatively and non-current round-trip”. “Tourist is a person who makes a journey for the sake of curiosity for the fun of traveling”. Tourists are: -Persons traveling for pleasure, health and domestic reason. -Persons arriving in the sea of sea cruise. -Persons traveling for convention. Tourism – the first commercial venture. A religious Englishman called Thomas Cook in 1841 arranged, for a fee, a one –day rail excursion from Leicester to Loughborough for 540 members of a temperance league. Thus the first bona fide travel agent was Thomas Cook. While Cook himself did not make a profit on this first venture, he was a man of vision and was convinced that there was a need for a skilled “travel arranger”. So by 1845 he had become the first full-time travel agent, operating train excursions from Leicester. The next year he chartered a train and steamer for an excursion to Scotland for 330 people. In 1851 Cook arranged ocean steamship travel and accommodations for more than 1,50,000 visitors to the World Exposition in London and in 1856 he operated the first escorted “grand tour” of Europe. Tours to Europe and Middle East were also conducted and, in 1872, the first around the world tour was conducted. Tourism as a Service Industry Tourism as a service industry comprises of several allied activities which together produce the tourism product. Involved in the tourism product are three major sub-industries. They are: -1. Tour operators and travel agents. 2. Accommodation sector (hoteling and catering) and3. Passenger accommodation. According to international estimates, a tourist spends 35% of his total expenditure on transportation, about 40% on lodging and food and the balance 25% on entertainment, shopping and incidentals. The product in this case is not confirmed to travel and accommodation but includes a large array of auxiliary services ranging from insurance and entertainment and shopping, demand generation, in addition to the consumer motivation, is also heavily dependent upon powerful persuasive communication both at the macro (country) level and the micro (enterprise) level. The participants in the process of this service business can be illustrated by the figure below. Some of the pointers to nature of tourism as a Service Industry1. Tourism accounts for nearly 6% of world trade. 2. Bulk of tourism business is located in Europe and North America. , with 1/8 of the market being shared between the other regions. 3. The highest growth rate in tourism in recent years has been in the third world. 4. Tourism, like most pure services, because of the character of inseparability, exemplifies a product, which cannot be sampled before purchase; the prospective consumers have to travel to a foreign destination in order to consume the product. 5. The major players in the tourism market include a number of intermediary companies. Some of them transnational in character, some of them exhibit vertical integration, both backward and forward, acquiring interests in all major sectors of this service industry. The Tourism Product- Factors Governing Demand. Because of the unique nature of the nature of tourism product- it being an amalgam of the characteristics of a destination and the infrastructural as well as managerial efforts of the promoter, the determinants of tourists demand emanate from both individual tourist motivations and the economic, social, technological factors. Some of these are: • Income Levels In the last 30 years, disposable incomes around the world have shown upward trends, thus allowing more money for activities like leisure travel. Smaller families have meant higher allocations per person in the family. More and more women are entering the workforce and in real terms the cost of travel has fallen. The dramatic rise of tourism in the last 50 years can be attributed in a large measure to the combined effect of more leisure time and rise in both real and disposable incomes. • More Leisure time: Increasing unionization of labour right from 1930 onwards has reduced the number of working hours per week. Changing managerial orientations towards human resources have increased the levels of pay and paid vacation time in most developed countries. Now people have longer periods of leisure, which could be allocated to travel. • Mobility Better transportation and communication services have made the world a smaller place, and have brought both exposure and awareness of distant lands to larger sections of potential tourists across the world. Faster modes of transport have cut down on travel time, making it easier for people to economically plan and execute trips abroad. • Growth in Government Security Programmes and Employment Benefits: The growth in government security programmes and well entrenched policies of employee benefits mean that quite a large number of families may have long term financial security and may be more willing to spend money for vacations. Tourist Classification:- Tourists can be classified into the following seven demand categories:-1. Explorer: – Very limited in number, these tourists are looking for discovery and involvement with local people. 2. Elite: – People who favour special, individually trips to exotic places. 3. Offbeat: – These are filled with a desire to get away from the usual humdrum life. 4. Unusual: – Visitors who are looking forward to trips with peculiar objectives such as physical danger or isolation. 5. Incipient mass: – A steady flow, traveling alone or in small-organized groups using some shared services. 6. Mass: – The general packaged tour market, leading to tourist enclaves abroad. 7. Charter: – Mass travel to relaxation destinations, which incorporate as many as standardized, developed world facilities as possible. The Travel Decision:- The average tourist is faced with considerable uncertainty regarding the decision and may have only scanty ideas about distant destinations. His evaluation of alternatives is also limited to the extent of this awareness about possible destinations. The stages of travel decision can be described as: -1. Travel Desire:-The first step where the need to travel is felt and the pros and cons are thought about. 2. Information Collection and Evaluation:-This stage involves the process of finding out the trip from travel agents, books and acquaintances . information so collected is evaluated against criteria of cost and time constraints, alternative possibilities, relative attractiveness of destinations, perceived ‘safety’ o the alternative destinations etc. 3. Travel Decision:-This is the decision phase involving selection of destination, travel, mode of accommodation and activities to be undertaken. 4. Travel Preparation and Experience:-This involves tickets, bookings, travel, money and documents arrangement, clothing and undertaking of the travel. 5. Travel Satisfaction Evaluation:-The whole tourism expenditure is constantly evaluated before, during and after the experience is used to influence future decisions. The marketing concept for the travel and tourism industry is profit driven and customer centric (unlike sales which are volume driven and target centric). Service Marketing TriangleService marketing is unique in many ways in the travel and tourism industry. There are 3 players in the transaction process:- – Company: A travel and tourism company listens to the customers and evolves/develops the travel/tour package and it communicates the attractiveness and the utility of that very tour package directly to the customers. Here it (the company) performs external marketing. The company makes promises to the customers. – Providers: They are a travel company’s internal customers constituting employees and agents. The company does internal marketing with the providers educating and motivating them about the idea of the particular tour package which they can offer to their customers. This is done to enable the providers to effectively carry out the service transaction process. The providers make provisions for office space, accessibility and connectivity. The company enables promises to be kept by this infrastructural association. – Customers (Travelers): The customers are the reasons that the travel company exists and for whom the company has designed the traveling and touring package as well as set up the infrastructural facilities and spent money on employee development programmes. Here the providers are the only ones who interact with the customers, like the travel agents interact with the customers and not the company. The agents perform interactive marketing which is on-time, all-time, every-time. This is the most crucial aspect of service marketing in the travel and tourism sector. Those agents have the responsibility of ‘keeping promises’ made and enabled by the company. The providers (agents) are responsible for the perceived quality level of the service transaction. This underlines the uniqueness of service marketing. Tourism Products: 1. Accommodation• Hotels• Motels• Boatels• Flotels 2. Destination • Natural Scenes• Historic Excellence• Artificial Beauties• Social Cultural Excellence 3. Transportation • Infrastructurali. Airwaysii. Railwaysiii. Roadwaysiv. Waterways • Local i. Local transport 4. Tour operators • Travel companies• Travel agents• Guides 5. Shopping • Handicrafts• Handloom• BooksMarketing mix for tourism product: The designing of the marketing mix variables in case of tourism is significant as it helps the marketer in conceiving the right ideas, particularly to raise the acceptability of the tourist product by stimulating and penetrating the demand. Framing of a proper marketing mix is significant because it helps the tourist organization in accomplishing the objective and projecting a fair image. Product Mix: Tourism is a composite product with components like attraction facilities and transportation. Attraction deserves an intensive care. It includes natural site, places of historic interest, events and cultural attraction. The facilities compliment attraction. The facilities include accommodation, food, transportation and recreational facilities. The transportation component includes the vehicles and infrastructure. Innovation in the tourism product helps raising the sensitivity. The users of the service are looking forward to better and improved product. The provider of the tourist is a travel agent or the package tour. A well conceived and designed package tour, covering a wide range of tourist attraction at an economic price, helps in attracting the potential tourist. The travel agent performs numerous activities such as hotel arrangement and accommodation, site seeing arrangement, domestic transport arrangement, air travel arrangement etc. In a true sense the tour agents and the travel agents are the vehicles who can give a fillip to the tourism industry, provided they are well trained. Pricing: Pricing of the tourist product is complex. Geographical location of the destination, seasonality and varying demand affects the pricing decision. In India the pricing strategies become important for promoting or contracting the tourism industry, since more than 40% of the total population are below the poverty line. In order to develop the tourism industry more and more potential users are to be transformed into actual users. When a tourist proposes to visit a particular place, the total cost of his traveling also include the expenses incurred on transportation, accommodation and communication. Liberal pricing strategy is found to be a productive pricing decision, particularly in case of tourism industry. The pricing strategy which includes low income group people, student and retired persons can be more effective. This is possible if the government concessional and subsidized infrastructural facilities to the potential tourist below the average income. The different pricing methods generally used are cost based pricing, demand based pricing and competition based pricing. Promotions: The promotion mix includes advertising, publicity, sales support and public relations. The purpose of promotion is to make available the information to the user. Advertising the sales promotion can be effective when supplemented by publicity and personal selling. Radio, TV, newspapers, cinema and printings are some of the important vehicles for traveling of messages. Effective slogans raises the effectiveness of advertisement. Another important component of the promotion mix is public relation. It helps in projecting the image of an organization. Public relation and publicity include regular articles and photographs of tour attraction, use of TV and travel journalists to promote editorial comment. Public relation officer plays an important role. He should be efficient, active, impressive, intelligent and well-behaved. Good image projection can be made if the PRO manages the affair like a professional. It is said that word of mouth is the best form of publicity. The word of mouth promotion is an important tool in tourism marketing. Place: The tourist centers should be located at suitable points if the tourists spots are natural there is no question of selection. In a vast country like India with a divergent socioeconomic and cultural patterns, the promotion of domestic tourism encourages unity in diversity. Infrastructural facilities, transport and communication are important for development of tourist centres. The site selected should have natural surroundings, increased accessibility and improved amenities. At the same time it is also important that the ecological balance is not disturbed. Since growing ecological imbalances leads to pollution, some important steps like promoting afforestation, promotion and beautification may be undertaken in countering the side effects of atmospheric pollution and maintaining ecological balance.

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Leading Indian Hospitals, Healthcare providers (both Modern Medicine and Traditional Indian Medicine), Travel and Medical Tourism Industry providers have come together to form an industry association – Indian Medical Travel Association (IMTA) that aims to work together to make India the leading global healthcare destination. The phenomenon now popularly known as Medical Tourism is often cited as the next big opportunity for India after the IT outsourcing to earn billions of dollars in forex earnings and create jobs in the healthcare sector. So far only a select group of Indian hospitals have been making valiant attempts to market their services in international arena. More than a million overseas patients already treated at top Indian corporate hospitals like Apollo, Fortis, Wockhardt, Max, Manipal and many others have already proved to the world that the clinical quality, technology and cost proposition offered by India is unmatched. The capacity in super specialty segment Indian hospitals is expanding fast and there is no waiting period for local or overseas patients. CII Mc’Kinsey study first reported on medical tourism as the billion dollar opportunity for India way back in 2002 and the steady growth in overseas patient arrivals has validated the potential. With a large number of new private super specialty hospitals and even integrated health cities coming up in India’s top ten cities, India has the potential to become the global leader in the Medical Travel/ Outsourcing industry. Indian doctors and professionals are world renowned for their skills and the country has abundance of all the inputs like talented young manpower, local high quality manufacturing base for pharmaceuticals, technology hardware and software that makes the Indian costs for high end surgical procedures so attractive. The challenge really is on the non medical side, primarily on the marketing front and also to create infrastructure and services to support the growth of medical tourism. Indian Medical Travel Association (IMTA) – a non profit body and a unified voice of the Indian healthcare (modern medicine as well as traditional Indian medicine) and travel industry is aimed at preparing India for facing the challenges of global competition and actualise the tremendous opportunity for India to become a leading global healthcare destination. Modern medicine as well as India’s 5000 year old traditional therapies like Ayurveda, Siddha and Yoga can offer to the world an unbeatable healing package. “IMTA would strive to help its members reach out in a cost effective manner to millions of our potential global consumers who reside on the other side of the globe in a different time and cultural zone and make them aware of the tremendous value that Indian healthcare offers. The fact is that prior to choosing a hospital, the international patients first decide on the country or the destination. Therefore we all must join hands to aggressively promote INDIA as a preferred global healthcare destination,” Says Pradeep Thukral, Executive Director, Indian Medical Travel Association (IMTA) The Government of India and its various arms are actively supporting the growth of medical tourism to India. In a message to IMTA, the Union Tourism Minister, Kumar Shailaja conveyed “This is indeed a commendable initiative and we all know the tremendous opportunity  that Medical Tourism presents for India. On behalf of the Ministry of Tourism, I would like to provide all possible support this industry initiative  and would like to wish IMTA and its members great success in their efforts. Two years ago the Government of India introduced a special category of Visa called M Visa for foreigners desirous of coming to India for medical treatment. India’s Ministry of Tourism has achieved phenomenal success in last five years with its much acclaimed “Incredible India “campaign that has multiplied the arrival of foreign tourists to India. The current year 2009 is being promoted by Indian Ministry of Tourism as “Visit India’” year and the ministry is keen to promote Medical Tourism. It has recently notified the Market Development Assistance (MDA) Scheme to eligible Medical Tourism players which enables them to get financial support for participation in overseas promotional events.

In growing numbers, visitors from all over the world are now arriving in Vietnam, whether for the sandy beaches, to explore the Unesco World Heritage listed sites, to escape to the mountains, or simply to experience the warmth of the Vietnamese people. Vietnam must grasp this unique opportunity and ensure all its visitors are given the best that the country has to offer. Following the trend taken by tourism and other industries throughout the world in the 21st century, Asian Travel Vietnam now familiar with terms such as “sustainability”. The question now is how to ensure Vietnam takes the right path to become a sustainable yet attractive tourist destination. Not only does Asian Travel Vietnam want to take you to the farthest corners of the Vietnam, we want to do so in a way that preserves the local environments and communities we sell. This way the nation’s most exciting regions will stay that way for generations to come. For that reason, a portion from each Asian Travel Vietnam branded tour booking is donated to local community causes or to preserve eco-friendly tourism in our top selling regions. We not only to help lure first time- visitors to the country but importantly, to create an environment which will encourage visitors to return to Vietnam time and time again.

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