Tourism marketing the role of the internet. Tourism destination: Greece

Abstract

The specific dissertation investigates the broad concept of tourism and how it has been shaped in recent years with reference to the types, forms and characteristics of the tourism product. Furthermore, the study analyses the marketing communication mix of the tourism industry and tries to emphasize the significance of applying e-marketing practices for the promotion and advertisement of tourism destinations and services as well as for their management. The ultimate goal is to highlight the necessity of standardization as well as the integration of all tourism services under one unique online-standardized trustworthy platform, certified by the United Nations World Tourism Organization. A number of hypotheses were formulated in order to perceive the objectives. It must be stressed out that the online platform has been developed to better understand the nature of online tourism as well as to carry out as many test cases as possible for the collection of the marketing results. The online platform is still in progress of development not to mention that it constituted the trigger for the creation of a startup tourism company with fully automated procedures. A proposal, in terms of marketing and management, is presented for the beneficial cooperation between the private and the public sectors in the tourism industry, which is scalable, flexible, totally adjustable and applicable to all the countries worldwide. This study contributes to the field of tourism by testing Greece as a destination marketing success model that can definitely be applied internationally.