Tourism and Hospitality

According to Horner and Swarbrook (2007) tourism involves travelling or being involved in leisure activities. Hospitality involves friendly treatment of guests or tourists and is a very important sector in the tourism industry (Horner and Swarbrook, 2007). Understanding consumer behavior is very crucial towards making decisions about marketing of tourism products and activities.

In order to optimize the marketing activity, and thus fully benefit from the tourism industry, it is necessary to understand how consumers make their decisions and the factors that affect the decision making by the tourists. Moreover, it is crucial to understand consumer tastes at various seasons. The tourism industry changes with seasons. For example, tourism trends during the winter seasons might be different from the trends during the summer climates. As such, tourists have different tastes and preferences during the different seasons.

Proper understanding of the consumer tastes and preferences is important as it helps in the design of goods and services that are in need at the time, thus satisfying the consumers. It is this satisfaction that makes a tourism company become familiar and draw better reputation. Moreover, understanding consumer behavior patterns is helpful in persuading the tourists to choose products that have been made so as to meet their needs.

For a tourism company to be successful and become popular, there are various other factors, beyond understanding of the consumer behavior that are involved. Such factors include location of the tourism company, the culture around the tourist company, services being offered by the tourism company, the marketing strategy employed by the tourism company, hospitality of the tourism company and ...

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... by being customer oriented, the companies are able to retain the customers they already have and attract more customers to the company. It is the reputation gained by the customers that make such companies famous.

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Horner, S. and Swarbrooke, J., 2007, Consumer Behavior in Tourism, 2nd Edition, Elsevier Ltd.

Knowles, T., D, Diamantis and Joudalla, B.E., 2004. The Globalization of Tourism &

Hospitality: A Strategic Perspective, 2nd Edition, Bedford Row, London, Thomson

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Reisinger, W., 2009. International Tourism: Cultures and Behavior, Elsevier