Sample
TITLE
Marketing Tourism in Tasmania: An empirical study exploring the use of digital marketing in Tourism in Tasmania.
INTRODUCTION
Tourism is the biggest growth industries for many countries across the world. As a key part of the process of globalisation and the development of international trade, it caters to the increasingly greater desire of people to travel. International communications have made it possible, furthermore, for people across the globe to socialise, thus there is now a far greater interest in travelling, not only for pleasure, but also for business (OECD 2004, p. 1). The barriers, and fears, of previous generations have largely disappeared and this has further enhanced the wishes of people to travel to foreign lands.
According to Tourism Research Australia (2011, p. 1), tourism is a significant sector in the Australian economy and is estimated to have contributed 2.6 per cent towards GDP and to have accounted for 4.6 per cent of employment in 2009-2010. The nation is divided into 84 tourism regions and this enables comparisons of the relative importance of tourism at these sub-national levels.
Tasmania has seven of the 84 Australian tourist regions, namely East Coast, Hobart and Surrounds, Launceston and Tamar Valley, Northern, North West, Southern and West Coast (Tourism Research Australia 2011, p. 2). Out of the top twenty regions in terms of regional economic importance, the West Coast and East Coast Regions of Tasmania were respectively 5th and 6th (Tourism Research Australia 2011, p. 6). In terms of statistics, the economic importance of tourism expenditure in the West Coast Region was 16.2 per cent of total economic output in 2010 and total tourist expenditures were $102 million. The respective figures for the East Coast were 14.6 per cent and $129 million (Tourism Research Australia 2011, p. 6).
Tasmania has benefitted from record growth in its tourism industry in recent years and this, according to IRIS Tasmania (2010 Tourism, 1 page), is due to beliefs that it has the “world’s cleanest, purest air, purest water and fertile soils.” Furthermore, over 40 per cent of the State is either National Park or a World Heritage area (IRIS Tasmania 2010, Tourism, 1 page). One further contributory factor is greatly improved access as well as competition between carriers (IRIS Tasmania (2010). Thus, the numbers of tourists as well as their expenditure are expected to continue to rise strongly in the coming years. Alongside this boom in tourism, there has been similar growth in digital marketing.
Therefore, one further contributory factor to the growth of tourism and travel generally can be seen as digital marketing. This not only fundamentally increases the advertisement tools available, but also gives the opportunity for many varieties of relatively inexpensive but innovative marketing. In the past there were just the traditional media such as, Television, Radio or newspapers and magazines, but now there are many options, just two being the Social Media and webpages. However, there may be gaps between the dynamics of the optimisation of digital marketing and the approaches taken by official organisations. Therefore, research is necessary to establish where these gaps are, why they have occurred, and the relative cost benefits in terms of tourist numbers and revenue which may accrue if they are enhanced. In sum, the research question is: How could we use the digital marketing to enhance the efficiency of marketing tourism in Tasmania.
JUSTIFICATION FOR THE PROPOSED RESEARCH
As noted above, tourism in a world-wide sense is enormous in terms of GDP and jobs. It is also an important sector in Australia as a whole and in Tasmania in particular. We have also noted the extent to which tourism has grown in Tasmania, but this should not lead to complacency. It is believed from a review of the methods that are still being employed by official organisations that many benefits could be gained by embracing digital marketing. However, this should be considered and appraised before any recommendations are possible, hence this research proposal.
PRELIMINARY LITERATURE REVIEW
The literature review would cover two interlinked topics. First, digital marketing has become an area of greatly increased interest, not only for marketers, but also for scholars and writers. It is noticeable that many books, magazines and websites have published significant articles and conducted research into this field (Ryan and Jones 2009). Secondly, tourism as a field of study has been exhaustively studied by many authors. An examination of textbook definitions of digital marketing and tourism provides the most general guide to theoretical content. Therefore, there is the potential to produce a comprehensive literature review based on many rich and illuminative sources.
RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODOLOGY
I will adopt an interpretive epistemological approach for this study, embracing subjective ontology, to allow for empathetic exploration of the perceptions of the stakeholders in tourism and also in using digital marketing. This study is an empirical, exploratory investigation using qualitative research methods to gain an in-depth understanding of the factors that are critical to the successful digital marketing of tourism. The study will be based on tourism in Tasmania from marketing perspectives and particularly the use of digital marketing for tourism in Tasmania. This study will collect data and then merge surveys and interviews in order to analysis that data. Two surveys will be external, and we will attempt to target people in Saudi Arabia, the United States and Canada. The survey and its instruments will be designed to measure how digital marketing could enhance the interests of people in visiting Tasmania. In the first survey we will use a link to a webpage that gives information and pictures about Tasmania, and then use Google to analytically measure the number of visitors to the webpage before and after the survey. The second survey will be posted on the webpage to elicit the reactions of people who visited it. Further interviews in Tasmania will focus on stakeholders within the tourism sector. The interviews will ask how they market tourism in Tasmania now. What are their perceptions and hopes? From the result we hope to address the gaps between what is occurring now and what these organisation could implement to maximise the potential for the digital marketing of tourism in Tasmania.
RESEARCH PLAN
Following the Introduction, the Research Report will take four sequential stages; the first stage will focus on the Literature Review, the second on the Methodology and the third on collecting data. This will then be analysed. Finally, we will present the results, reach conclusions and make any relevant recommendations.
RESEARCH TIMETABLE
|
Chapter |
Topic |
Percentage |
Words |
Time |
|
1 |
Introduction |
5 % |
1000 |
10 days |
|
2 |
Literature Review |
25 % |
5000 |
20 days |
|
3 |
Methodology |
25 % |
5000 |
30 days |
|
4 |
Data collection and analysis |
25 % |
5000 |
30 days |
|
5 |
Conclusions, recommendations and Implications |
20 % |
4000 |
30 days |
|
6 |
Risk time management* |
|
|
30 days |
*This time will be use just if needed in case of any delay in process of collecting data.
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