The perishability of a service is especially a problem when demand fluctuates.

It has been recognised that the tourism and hospitality service industry products have unique characteristics that differentiate them from substantiate goods products and provide platform for evolving and various marketing strategies for service and goods. Tourism products are defined as the products which fulfill tourist needs (Jovicic, 1998). According to Murphy and Murphy (2004) tourism is about selling travel experience which involves the collective efforts of several tourism organisations to satisfy their customers’ needs.

 Tourism services are intangible because they do not smell and cannot be experienced before purchasing

(Bennett and Strydom, 2001). It is also stated that consumer of tourism industry may undergo intense level of risk, as they cannot experience a service before purchase. However, tourism product contains tangible elements as well like meal, airline seat, and bed of hotel but all these tangible elements pass through intangible service products and cannot be experienced before purchasing. Author also states that consumer can only have a thorough imagination about tangible aspects of the tourism product and can only access them through interiors of the hotel or behavior of the staff etc. Because of their different nature from other products, tourism products consist of various unique components which are discussed below.

 The tourism and hospitality product is called composite product as it involves several components like accommodation, sightseeing, vehicle hire, food and beverage – this is also known as a package. These components are tangible and intangible and they complement each other. They are interconnected and also called interdependent as each offers just part of the total sum. The composite nature of the tourist product is only experienced at the time of consumption as explained earlier that tourist product is composed of different independent components.

Koutoulas (2004) state that all components of the product adds value and if they are not combined they will offer limited value or sometime no benefits to the consumers. For instance, generally hotel offers accommodation, food and beverage, reception service, quality service, bell desk, luggage facilities, spa, swimming Poole under one roof. It is the complete bundle of components that fully indulge consumer primary and secondary needs (Koutoulas 2004).

 Tourism service products have various unique attributes as follows.

 Intangible nature - The principal difference between goods and service products is goods manufacture while service is performed live. It implies that every service which is performed in hotel or restaurants, differ from other even if it is performed at the same place, or at the same time of other day (Kaiser 2012).

Services products are perishable Service cannot be stored like tangible goods and products.  It is somewhat similar in nature as inseparability and perishability because there is not any possibilities to put stock of products for future or upcoming demand if service product is not sold. It means that if it is not sold it will go in waste (Bennett and Strydom 2001).

 People-oriented: Kaiser (2012) argues that tourism industry mainly depends upon people. The interaction between consumer and staff of industry ensure the perceived product quality. Not like goods product consumer get features, durability, and quality. The memorable experience of the holiday entirely depends on the all-personal interaction among tour operator’s booking process, hotel staff, transport driver, flight attendant, guide at destination, shopping so on (Kaiser 2012).

 Inflexibility:  Travel products are inflexible in connection with the variation. Against the spontaneous high demand, hotel property cannot transform their level of capacities to balance high and low demand. This can be explained as sometimes all rooms in a hotel are sold out and other times large number of tables in a restaurant are empty (Kaiser 2012).

 Heterogeneity: Various aspects influence the delivery of service. Heterogeneity explains the variance in interaction with every consumer, this also explains that the satisfaction and experience of every customer will be different even though services are performed under same environment and place (Ivanovic, 2008).

 Perishability: As production and consumption takes place simultaneously hence there is no question to store service product for instance if some rooms are sold in a hotel and few are left its completely lost forever. Service products cannot be kept for future like goods (Evans et al 2003).

 Inseparability- This implies that the act of production or execution of service and consumption takes place at the same time and at same environment or weather not in the home environment. It also implies that most of the staff present who serves present and seen by the consumers (Evans et al 2003).

 Imitability: Tourism promotions like discount on meal, half price, and advertisement can be imitated by tourism enterprises. So how can hotel make special selling approach? The obvious reply is consistency, location but their service cannot be copied (Evans et al 2003).

 Various other characteristic nature of tourism products are explained below

 Seasonality and demand fluctuations: It is an attribution of travel and tourism industry. In tourism industry demand fluctuates according to seasons of the year. As a result, in some destination when season is favorable occupancies increase to 90 to 100 per cent. Hotels properties go fully occupied and on the contrary of this in low season occupancy level goes 30 per cent down. Hence in tourism these demand variations are quite significant due to perishability. Need to generate demand where there is less demand due to seasonality (Middleton, Fyall and Morgan 2009). However, industry emphasis on service quality of its own product that produce significantly to satisfactory experience but it has little control over its own destiny nothing can be done for weather and others factors although industry can work in cooperation with forestry and host communities to enrich good relations (Murphy and Murphy 2004).

 Interdependence of tourism products: All the attractions of destination are linked with each other. Tourist decide to visit destination not only seeing attractions but they consider accommodation, catering, fascination, service, facilities, transport all together (Middleton, Fyall and Morgan 2009).

 High fixed costs of service operations: In tourism industry it is generally case of fact that operations have high fixed cost and relatively low margin of profit. This can be overcome by generating extra demand. As most of the giant tourism business are bound to operate on quite low narrow margin. Total cost of expenditure is quite high and profit margin is low. This issue is intensively concern when there is low season and number of tourist is less (Middleton, Fyall and Morgan 2009) Tourism is also called fragmented industry as its nature of high complexity due to the price- sensitive nature of demand and intangible, perishability, and inseparability of the product (Williams 2004).

 Service failure: The chances of service failure are more likely in tourism due to integral characteristic nature of tourism product in comparison to tangible product. To resolve service failure issues effective recovery actions are quite significant, consumer in service failure look for compensation. Following compensations refunds, replacement, free gifts, credits are form of compensation. Another tactic used by organization, which involve policies and criteria than can certainly reconcile the conflicts. The advantages of service recovery are innumerable and resolving consumer’s issues regarded an investment for the future of the organization (Kozak and Decrop 2009).

Marketing approaches in tourism

As tourism product, have unique characteristic inseparability, perishability, seasonality etc. different marketing mix applications vary but most popular referred are ‘4ps’ (product& service, price, place, promotion). To meet the challenges in terms of consumer needs, enterprise must develop product that can contented them.

 Product According to Kotler et al  (2010) the tourism product has unique features of activities, physical resources and services.  The customer buys these features for a certain experience. In tourism product generally there are five levels: a generic product, product at substantial utility, expected product, potential product and enriched product (Tihi et al 1999), these can be distinguished as below;

• The Main Product – The basic utility that a guest expects from the product, the emphasize should be placed on that feature
• Expected Product – depending on the target audience expectations these are the services and goods which needs to be there in a product for it to be able to be used
• Additional product – This include the features which make the product unique from a competitor’s product
• Expanded product – This involves the environments for presenting a services to a client. These environments are the ambience, interaction of guest with the serving system.

 Price : Pricing vary according to geographic location of the destination, seasonality, fluctuation of fuel price in the country, commodity price, and tax. All these factors responsible of instability of pricing. If fuel price increases, it has direct impact on tour package hence tour package work on narrow margin. To meet the demand and supply, managers introduce discount business to business pricing strategies to boost sale. The aim of pricing is to draw target-segmented market. In addition to meet the pricing challenges in tourism business first need to correspond with the marketing strategy, which involve product positioning, value for the money, return on investment for long run. And second corresponds to the marketing operation that involve personal relationship with local service providers, suppliers, and meet the contemporary demand and competition. The penetrative fixed cost and low adaptable cost of operating hotels and airlines serve sensible for the embracing of marginal price methods and effective yield management strategies (Fyall and Garrod).

 Place : Perspective of tourism place defines location of all points of sale, which offer access to the tourism product for potential tourist. For example, product of Disney sell through website that access all over the world or different tour operators etc. Place involves different distribution channels, direct mail, free dial number, websites, travel agents, Internet, Computerized reservation system CRS and tourist information center etc (Middleton and Clarke).

 Promotion: Creation of recognition of product has significant impact on consumers that oblige them to purchase. Awareness through promotion support in maximising sale, duration of stay, frequency of visit. In this regard tourism enterprises undertake informing and persuading potential consumers using right channels of contemporary for this various elements of promotion follows.

 Value of word-of-mouth advertising. Generally in tourism industry consumers have to trust on suggestion of other in terms of choosing destination or hotel, which include friends, siblings or business companions. Hence ‘word-of- mouth’ can play significant role in succeeding of most tourism enterprises. Let’s discuss what components make the word of mouth.

 Customer satisfaction, loyalty, service quality, trust, and the perceived value have positive and important effect on the development of word of mouth for tourism enterprises. According to Bloemer et al 1999 generally consumer have positive and negative perception from service quality, when have positive perception they recommend others and when it is negative they publicize negative word of mouth. In addition according to Zeithaml et al 1996 Service quality contain five consideration those are tangible factors, reliability, assurance, responsiveness, empathy these dimensions reflects quality of service of the service organisation and service quality have significant link with consumer behavioral reactions and positive and negative consumer behavioral having perceived service reflects word of mouth. Apart from that as per Zeithaml 1988 perceived value of service also ensure words of mouth. Which is complete evaluation of product based on perceptions or desirability that shows what consumer has got and what he/she gives respecting service. According to Ranaweera and Pranbhu, 2003 Findings from empirical studies demonstrates intense level of trust of consumer on the product of the organisation have relationship that produce tendency to publish word of mouth. In this context according to Kau and loh, 2006 Consumer trust on the organisation or its employees affected by their satisfaction. (Yasvari et al 2012) However according to Heskett et al 1997 there is strong relationship between the quality of goods and service offered, Which produced consumer satisfaction and loyalty as a result consumer received value, Which is amalgamation of quality and price. For instance, budget traveler’s looks standard of amenities and good service however, luxury travelers look premium product and best service in return. Apparently, value is visible and quite easily explains and appraise through assessment, which involve quality of service, room, car or coach rental, and food related cost (Murphy et al 2004).

What characteristic of services can be a problem when demand fluctuates?

What are the three major marketing areas that hospitality companies face the task of increasing?

Which of the following are parts of the service profit chain?

What is the technique used to measure lifestyle called?