Tourism Marketers Gather in Kuching, Sarawak

Nov 10, 09 | 1:57 am

By David Beirman

Conferences on tourism markleting are hardly novel, but the International Forum on Tourism Marketing which was organised by the Egnatia Academy in Kuching was special simply because it cooked up a  bubbling cauldron of marketing ideas from every segment of the toursim and hospitality industry. The speakers included senior executives from desination managment, global distribution systems, hotels, convention and event organisers, airlines, tour operators, travel writers and academics.

The host city, Kuching was an approrpriate place to talk marketing. This beautiful capital city of the Malayasian state of Sarawak is undergoing a tourist boom of its own and is expanding its capacity to manage conference and incentive groups. The Sarawak Convention Bureau has been actively promoting the MICE market to Sarawak since the expansion of international hotel and convention centre infrastructure according to Christian Wendt, Director of Marketing, Sarawak Convention Bureau. The Srawak Convention Bureau certainly know how to conduct a marketing campaign; their newly released DVD has a great mixture of humour and wow factors which are certain to attract people and conventions to Sarawak. 

The conference venue -  the newly opened Sheraton Four Points near Kuching's modern international airport - was certainly abuzz with conferences on topics ranging from the protection of the Orangutang, to high tech communications.

Ramesh Talwar Dkrector of India Tourism in Singapore gave an excellent presentation of the evolution of the marketing of India and its response to setbacks such as the Mumbai attack of one year ago.

Brett Henry, Vice President (Agency Marketing) of leading Asia GDS company Abacus alerted delegates to the exponetial growth of social networks such as facebook and twitter and the very inexpensive marketing opportunities they presented to tourism and hospitality marketers.

The author discussed regional marketing using the Eastern Mediterranean Tourism Association of Australia as an example of successful industry and media focussed marketing of a region based on its tourism assets and overcoming the political differences which exist in the fifteen countries straddling the Eastern Med coastline between Italy and Jordan.

Ali Kasa, Managing Director of Egnatia (the organisers of the conference) gave an outstanding presentation which discussed the essence of marketing which is to communicate and commit to providing a total experience of customer centred service. Ali's presentation was connected with the ideas proposed buy US Tourism marketing guru, Daniel Levine who claims that tourism is all about creating an unique experience as opposed to just delivering a product or a service.

Further details of the above conference and fortehcoming Egnatia events can be accessed on www.egnatia-group.com


About David Beirman

David Beirman is the founder and National Secretary of the Eastern Mediterranean Tourism Association. He lectures in Tourism Managment at the University of Technology-Sydney and the Blue Mountains Hotel School.