5. Summary and Discussion
5.2 Managerial Implications
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exists inadequate or insufficient integration across marketing disciplines as well as across countries so that the future suggestions for better integration can be draw.
5.2 Managerial Implications
After analyzing the global promotions of Taiwan’s tourism, the current research provides three implications for Tourism Bureau.
1. The regional strategy in Northeast Asia can be applied to all marketing disciplines but also should beware not to lose all focus on spokespersons.
As Hsi-Chi, Chen, the chairman of Department of Tourism at Shih Hsin
University pointed out, celebrity endorsement is indeed a good way to attract people to visit Taiwan, but, more importantly, it should demonstrate the feature and culture of Taiwan because what urge visitors to stay, enjoy the trip, and further recommend Taiwan to their friends is the place itself (Central News Agency, 2007/6/26). The news report also suggests that the practice in Southeast Asia is a good example of
combining celebrity endorsement and the image and value of Taiwan. Therefore, if the characteristics of the spokespersons and the theme of the campaign can be integrated better in Northeast Asia, people can relate the two easily and the effect will be much stronger. On the other hand, the regional strategy can be extended from its current practice on advertising and PR to the other marketing tools—sales promotion and direct marketing. In this way, synergy as well as the consistent image can be created through all marketing disciplines as the example in Southeast Asia.
2. In Europe and America, innovative marketing programs are urged to attract people’s attention as well as to manifest the uniqueness of Taiwan instead of using the past promotions.
During this campaign, the two CF are borrowed from the past, which may not
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effectively arouse people’s attention and curiosity, though the whole image is
consistent. However, the image can be continued with different presentations or forms as long as the positioning is maintained. The ad on Monocle serves as a good example for such innovative marketing. In fact, innovative marketing is important especially for such a huge region like Europe and America where arousing people’s attention and notice on a faraway island as Taiwan is not easy by traditional media, let along the ones derived from the past. Thus, the current study suggests that more creative promotions like the recent event “The Best Trip in the World” should be designed to draw the world’s eyes on Taiwan.
3. Tourism Bureau should strength the integration of the platform of direct marketing—websites of Tourism Bureau in different language versions.
According to “2008 Annual Survey Report on Visitors Expenditure and Trends in Taiwan,” Internet, with 76% of usage, is the most common source for attaining the commercials or information about Taiwan, followed by newspaper/magazine (75%), and TV/radio (71%), showing the significance of the website of Tourism Bureau. In addition, since the websites of Tourism Bureau serve as the only tool for direct marketing, the management and integration of the websites are crucial.
Among the three regions, only the website for Southeast Asia, which integrates well the concept of diversity of Taiwan with regional strategy of celebrity
endorsement, serves a good example for helping strength the whole image and complement the other marketing tools. Both the websites in other two regions,
especially the European versions, should learn from the example in Southeast Asia so that more consistent, holistic, and synergetic effects can be achieved.
The current study suggests that the websites in Japanese and Korean versions can strength its connection with regional strategy (i.e. vertical integration) as mentioned
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earlier while the websites for Europe and America should have more connection to give the western people a more consistent image. Besides, the European websites should contain more interactivity such as download section or online games to reveal more information for the local people while they surf the websites.
However, the most urgent and important thing Tourism Bureau needs to improve is the internal integration of all online resources such as the translation problem.
According to the news report (China Times, 2009/7/4), the English spelling of the name of scenic spot in the main website of Tourism Bureau are found inconsistent with those on the local website accessed through external links. For instance, “Yehliu”
in the main website becomes “Yeliou” in the local website, which causes confusions for international visitors. In fact, the inconsistency of English translation happens not only on the websites but also in the real life. The TV news (TTV, 2009/6/17) has reported that the famous national scenic area “Siraya” is translated as “West Pulling Elegant” in some places. This is not only confusing but also ironic for so-called
“friendly traveling destination.” Besides, another serious problem pointed out by the news report is that the website of Tourism Bureau is suspected to contain virus.
Although the virus has been found an error caused by technical problems, the warning of the virus detection still scares away some Internet users.
Ying-Hui, Cheng (Interview, 2009/6/19) recognized the importance of Internet marketing and emphasized that the websites are an important contact points for people, especially the younger generation. In fact, to promote tourism, Taiwan Tourism
Bureau has spent 15 million NT dollars buying the keyword advertising on Google around 13 countries in 2009 (China Times, 2009/6/11). The decision helps expose Taiwan to the world and is supposed to be a good start. However, before attracting people’s eyes on Taiwan, Tourism Bureau needs to deal with the inconsistency problem of translation and also integrate the internal resources of the websites first
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than talking about how to leave a good impression on them.