The main components of a better product are discussed below:
Main Components
1. Attractions:
These elements within the destination’s (tourism product) environment, independently and/or integrated form, succour as the principal motivation for tourists. Attractions comprise natural attractions (landscape, seascape, beaches, and climate), built attractions (historic and /or new townscape as in newly built resorts and purpose-built attractions such as theme parks), cultural attractions (presentation of history and folklore organized as festivals and pageants, museums, theatre), and social attractions (opportunities to meet with, or encounter the residents of destinations, and experience their lifestyle, to some extent).
However, for business and other nonleisure visitors, such as visits to friends and relatives, the primary motivation is provided by their affinity and alliance with the destination, while the leisure attractions may still be an influence.
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2. Accessibility:
Access is a subject of transport infrastructure and transport technology. Whilst transport infrastructure includes airports, harbours, motor ways and rail networks, transport technology becomes important in the form of costs of travel and the time consumed in reaching the destination.
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Therefore, accessibility can be specified in terms of the extent of comfort or hassle with which visitors can reach the destinations of their liking. The three critical factors in transportation – cost, convenience and speed – affect the success of every destination or tourism product, even if it is intended to be highly exclusive.
For most tourists, the choice of travel mode is guided by the choice of destination. Once again there are attractions of particular modes, including convenience, comfort and perhaps speed, as well as ‘distractions’ such as safety, and the same constraints of time and cost.
3. Destination Facilities/Amenities:
Destination facilities imply the elements within the destination or linked to it, and facilitate the tourists’ stay at destinations and their partaking in the tourist activities. Facilities are purpose-built around the needs and wants of the potential visitors from targeted segments in quantities identified by market feasibility studies.
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These facilities subsume accommodation (all types), restaurants, cafes and bars, transport at the destination (car rentals and taxis) and other ancillary services such as retailing, visitor information etc.
Nevertheless, there is surely some overlapping between attractions and facilities. For instance, a resort develops into an attraction in its own right; nonetheless its capital business is to cater facilities and should be categorized as such.
4. Images:
An image typically reflects the intrinsic qualities of the tourism product, its design, quality, style of attractions, and its built and social environment. For conceiving the total tourism product from consumers’ viewpoint, the natural focus moves to images of products. Images are a characteristic of all forms of tourism product meaning the perceptions i.e., ideas and beliefs tourists (actual and potential) hold about the products they invest in.
Images are, in fact, significant in the sense that they affect the buyer’s behaviour. Tourism product images are not given to be based on personal experience but on the information gathered from the tourist organizations and the tourists who have experienced it earlier.
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Images are, indeed, very potent and telling motivators in holiday- choice. These are the logical focus for tourism product marketing to uphold, adapt or create fitting images to influence potential tourists’ expectations.
5. Price:
Price is a function of the attractions and facilities provided, with a range of prices according to the needs of target visitor segments. Price is the sums total of the costs on product elements such as travel, accommodation and involvement in a range of selected services at the destination.
Price of the tourism product s is not static but changes by the physical distance travelled, nature of accommodation (deluxe or economy), season of the year (peak-time and lean/off-peak time), and the types of activity opted for.
There is no automatic compatibility between the components of the total product, which are hardly ever under the same title. Even within the same sector there will usually be many different organizations, each with different and at times conflicting objectives and interests.
And it is mainly the fragmented nature of the tourism industry in terms of control and ownership that makes it quite formidable/demanding for the tourist organizations at various levels to coordinate influence in marketing and /or planning.
Moreover, the degree of interdependence of the components within the framework of total product highlights the marked makings for collaboration called ‘Complementarity’ in marketing by the component enterprises in different sectors.
And this notion of complementarily has relatively much larger weight for small businesses, which are part of the total product. Medlik and Middleton (1973) suggest that “in terms of demand for products, product formulation involves analyzing and assessing consumer requirements (existing and potential) and identifying homogeneous groups of potential purchasers (segments).
In terms of supply, product formulation involves analyzing and assessing the product elements, and identifying (total tourism products) from the range of possibilities available at any destination.