Abstract
The tourism sector has grown substantially during the last two decades in many countries, including India. The growth in income levels, increased work pressures, change in lifestyles, investments in development of tourist destinations, expanded transport facilities and hospitality, and modern digital technologies are responsible for such an impressive performance of the sector. This chapter analyses the growth of tourism in India digital marketing initiatives, and finds the potential for digital applications in the marketing of tourism services. The study emphasizes the need for more digital applications to reach greater market segments in the domestic as well as international markets. The tourism sector widely uses information and communication technologies and other digital devices to create accessibility, information, expectations, and convenience to the potential tourists; and also to promote tourism in many new segments. This inquiry will be beneficial to the practitioners who play a pivotal role by adopting digital marketing practices in the tourism sector.
TopIntroduction
Tourism is spending time away from home for recreation, relaxation, knowledge, adventure, and pleasure. It is an activity of immense social, cultural and economic phenomenon. It facilitates economic growth as well as regional development. It entails the movement of people to countries or places outside their usual environment for personal or business/professional purposes (UNWTO, 2008). Tourism is one of the key drivers of economic activity in many countries. It not only facilitates the movement of leisure-loving people from one place to another around the world but also promotes a lot of industrial and business activity. It is one of the major sources of employment directly and indirectly. Human beings are having the natural urge for new experiences, and many desires of getting educated about the specialities of different locations around the world and be entertained. Tourism facilitates the satisfaction of such leisure needs. It also includes the religious and business interests of the people. The world is changing very fast due to industrialisation, modernisation and technological advancements, globalisation and digitalisation. Human motives are also changing and now people prefer to move around the globe in search of peace, leisure, and adventure.
Digital is no longer just about computers and the Internet but also about mobile phones, social networking, augmented and virtual reality, blockchain, artificial intelligence (AI), mobile apps and much more. Over the last two decades, there has been a tremendous shift in the way IT has been used for economic and societal development. Digital technology has transformed life and works across various institutions, sectors and industries including the tourism sector. Advancements in information technology (IT) servers and operating systems allowed the digitalisation of the tourism sector, and marketing took a different shape in India. Tourists can obtain information in no time about tourist locations across the globe, transportation facilities, and a variety of hotels or food through search engines and websites. Mobile and social media users can easily find reliable support information to decide on suitable travel destinations with just a few clicks. Impacted by digital marketing, global tourism has been significantly contributing to the economy of any country (Prabhala & Rao, 2017). The expansion of internet facilities across the world offers high potential to inform, educate and facilitate bookings to a large number of tourists at reasonable costs. The Internet serves as a communication tool between tourism intermediaries and end-consumers.
According to WTO (2018), the widespread use of the internet and internet-enabled devices is revolutionising the distribution of tourism information and providing consumers with direct access to online markets. An increasing proportion of internet users are buying online and tourism occupies a larger share of the e-commerce market. In many countries, governments are playing an important role in facilitating the use of electronic commerce in the tourism industry. The two main supporting factors for promoting e-commerce are the ‘security of the e-commerce system’ and ‘user-friendly web interface’. These factors help in building customer trust and convenience. Digital marketing refers to the utilization of electronic media by marketers to promote products or services in the market with the main objective of attracting customers and allowing them to interact with the brand through digital media (Yasmin, Tasneem, & Fatem, 2015). According to Mandal, Joshi, & Sheela (2016), digital marketing is the promotion of brands using all available forms of digital advertising media such as websites, online adverts, opt-in emails, interactive kiosks, interactive TV or mobiles to reach the target segment. One of the important techniques in digital marketing is social media marketing like Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, etc (Chaffey & Smith, 2013). The registered digital growth in terms of internet and smartphone users indicates that innovations like digital marketing such as social media marketing through digital media platforms can create a competitive advantage concerning not only nations and firms but can extend to tourism in terms of tourist arrival numbers (Mkwizu, 2019).
Key Terms in this Chapter
Socio-Cultural: A sociocultural system can be described as a human population seen in its ecological context as one of many subsystems of a larger ecological system.
Technology: It refers to the use of knowledge to achieve practical goals in a repeatable manner. It also refers to the products of such efforts, which might include both real things like utensils or machinery and intangible ones like software.
Globalization: Globalisation is a phrase used to describe how commerce and advances in technology have connected and interdependent the world.
Industrialization: It refers to the transition of the human community from an agrarian culture to an industrial society during a time of social and economic change known as industrialization. This entails a significant reorganisation of an economy for manufacturing.
Digital Communication: It refers to the use of internet tools such as email, social media messaging, and texting to communicate with other people or a specific audience.
Innovation: It refers to the practical execution of ideas that result in the introduction of new goods or services or improvements in the delivery of goods or services.
Digitization: It refers to the transformation of information into a digital format. The output is a representation of an object, image, sound, text, or signal that is created by producing a string of numbers that each describe a distinct collection of points or samples.
Digital Marketing: It refers to the practice of marketers promoting goods or services in the market through the use of electronic media with the primary goal of attracting customers and enabling them to interact with the brand.