Journal of Vacation Marketing

This paper provides a unique analysis of the visiting friends and relatives (VFR) market across four different countries. It highlights that this market, although substantial at both the domestic and international levels, is poorly understood and that certain common assumptions made by travel marketers about VFRs are inaccurate. Marketing directors’ attitudes toward the VFR market are measured in a special study of VFR marketing in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the USA. Successful cases of VFR marketing in these countries are described.

Brand awareness and brand image influence strategies of distribution channel management, particularly push and pull strategies within the channel. Thus, this research investigates brand awareness and brand image issues within tourism distribution channels. The eight major Australian domestic tour wholesaler brands were measured for the brand awareness of end consumers and travel agents. Also, brand image held in the minds of travel agents was researched. This research demonstrates that a combination of push and pull strategies could be used by domestic tour wholesalers to send appropriate messages to both travel agents and end consumers. This combination may be more effective than either strategy on its own because intangibility, heterogeneity, perishability and ownership issues affect the supply and demand of tourism services.

The study was designed to achieve a twofold objective. It examined the demographic and socioeconomic characteristics and trip-related attributes of outbound Chinese travellers to the United States. This particular market was then compared with Chinese visitors bound for nine Asia-Pacific countries and regions designated by the Chinese government as leisure travel destinations, and Chinese visitors to Japan and Western Europe. The purpose was to provide a profile of the US-bound Chinese market and identify a number of characteristics and attributes that significantly differentiated it from the other markets.

This paper outlines the marketing activities of the Australian-based Israel Tourism Office since 1994. This small national tourism office is a jointly funded arrangement between the Australian-Israel Chamber of Commerce and the Israel Ministry of Tourism. The paper briefly examines the Israel Ministry of Tourism’s overall strategy for the marketing of Holy Land 2000, and the implementation of the Israel Tourism Office’s activities in the Australasian and southwest Pacific region as it has sought to target the religious pilgrimage market. The paper also examines how Israel has sought to reposition itself as an Eastern Mediterranean destination rather than as a Middle Eastern destination, and looks at how it has established a series of cooperative marketing activities.

The world’s 90 million post-war baby boomers set the stage for some very fruitful international marketing efforts in adventure travel and educational or discovery tourism in the 21st century. Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United States (the CANZUS countries) have post-Second World War baby-boom generations that together form a cohesive and attractive potential market. But will international tourism marketers recognise that, as baby boomers in the CANZUS populations arrive at their peak earnings and savings years and approach retirement, they present a 21st-century challenge for new product development and marketing strategy in international tourism? This paper profiles three key segments of baby boomers in the CANZUS populations that have the highest likelihood of travelling to discover and learn for self-fulfilment in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and America and to experience soft and hard adventure in these countries. Since all four countries possess an abundance of natural and experiential tourism resources, some tourism product development and marketing strategies are proposed as well.

This case study examines the development of travel retailing within the UK’s major airports between 1987 and 1999. The paper reviews the strategic marketing and business developments undertaken by BAA plc since privatisation as it has developed its retailing division. The development of retailing concepts in its airports, joint partnerships at non-airport sites and acquisitions are examined. The impact of the abolition of intra-European Union tax and duty-free sales from July 1999 is looked at, and the future of BAA’s retailing strategies is considered.