Tourism marketing is a peculiar beast. There is no guaranteed formula for getting people to take notice of any particular product. There are some exclusive places, for instance, that never take out an ad, ever. Part of their marketing mystique is that they don’t need to advertise, everyone knows who they are and the cognoscenti who can afford the place don’t need to be told about it. Everyone who visits enthuses about it so much that there is a waiting list of people wanting to get in.

There are other places that advertise regularly and the guests flood in after every special offer. Some places swear by a particular magazine, saying that 80% of their bookings derive from a single ad, others say they advertise but have never received a single query for all their adspend. Some attractions rely on word of mouth; repeat business from long-established customers; walk-in trade; loyalty schemes, branding… the list is quite long. And some poor souls try every marketing trick in the book and still the phone doesn’t ring. It gets even more complicated when we are talking about marketing to the foreign market, with its different nooks and niches. What is clear, though, is that successful marketing depends almost entirely on personality. What works for some people will not work for others. It’s as if you need to try absolutely everything until you find something that fits.  Here’s a case study that illustrates the point.

Yvonne van Tol is a ferociously energetic lady of Dutch extraction who lives in Kirkwood in the Eastern Cape. She is passionate about the place and its tourism potential. When I first met her many years ago she had established a marketing company to promote the whole region on a communal basis. As a result of Yvonne’s efforts, I was able to visit the Addo region and was mightily impressed by the number and variety of high-quality tourist attractions. Yvonne has moved on a little bit and has now decided, through personal experience, that the communal tourism marketing approach does not work and that an individual marketing effort will deliver better results. So she has a list of clients for whom she does marketing, and it works exceptionally well. She puts out a regular newsletter, uses every marketing platform in existence and is constantly on the look-out for new ideas to market her clients. She also puts her own personality into it, which means that clients feel they are dealing with a friend and not an agent. Her latest newsletter contains charming observations about the number of foreign visitors who drove in the Addo Elephant National Park sporting their national flags, the Orange parade through the Eastern Cape, the visitors who enjoyed games at the magnificent Nelson Mandela Bay stadium. There was also a family of six who contacted her particularly to thank her for recommending Kariega Game Reserve, a four-star lodge near Addo. They said although it had been a luxury for them to stay there (they had been doing self-catering up till then and it had taken some persuading from Yvonne to get them to agree to go) it turned out to be the highlight of their holiday. It was Yvonne who introduced me to the elephant-back safaris of the Zuurberg, the noorsvlakte of Darlington, the river tours on the Kariega River and the orange orchards of Kirkwood. She has now expanded her range and is including East London and the Wild Coast in her portfolio. She told me she was trying to attract European visitors to these areas, which up till now have largely been the preserve of local people and wild-eyed backpackers attracted by the hippie reputation of Port St Johns. The Wild Coast, she says, has become a location for international film productions.  With her background and contacts she can cater for Dutch, German, Russian and French-speaking visitors.  There is nothing more attractive than a marketer who is genuinely enthusiastic about tourism product, who adds a personal touch to their marketing, who makes it clear that no effort is too great to make sure you get the best service. Perhaps if good marketing efforts have anything in common, it is energy, a willingness to try new ideas, the ability to listen to the client and understand what they want, to take the occasional risk and urge them to step outside their comfort zone. From my own experience I want to feel that the marketer is actually interested in my holiday and doesn’t just see me as a ka-ching on the cash register. Nowadays, with so many marketing tools at one’s disposal – such as Facebook, Twitter, Skype, instant messaging (the Internet that used to be the latest thing is now just SO last century), it needs an active and enthusiastic person to occupy all the spaces to get the message across. It is people like Yvonne who do this, with personal attention, personal enthusiasm and boundless energy. You can contact her through her webpage www.GreaterAddo.com