Marketing mix

It's an opportunity to relax, rest, rejuvenate, and explore! Explore yourself, explore community, and explore the beauty and culture of Chengbin, Taitung. There are many ways to stay, play, and getaway at Shalom, from simple overnight visits to our all-inclusive mediation vacations.

Shalom Retreat will have only one core product what they offer, the 4 nights/5 days mediation retreat. Addition to this their offer additional services, such as art classes and special adventure outing.

Shalom retreat offering has been built up from smaller pieces and outcome is a full service package. The package includes train station transportation, meditation practices with profes-sional teacher, adventure explore and cultural activities. Train tickets must be purchased by the customer, as this would create too much work for the company to handle related to the cash flow what it would bring.

All linens, towels, natural soaps and toiletries with Shalom mark are provided, which could deeply root the Shalom Image in every customer`s mind.

Customer support in Shalom, Retreat case needs to focus more to the information seeking phase of the buying process. People, who plan to invest their money to travel other side of the world for a holiday, will highly appreciate the quality information form the company before making the purchase decision. This is also one of the competitive advantages for the Shalom Retreats if they can promise to answer inquiries within 24hours and offer possibility to customers to contact them e.g. Skype or Line directly within certain times. After-sales support is way to keep those customer relationships alive and get valuable feedback from the customer. Therefore sending an email to the previous customers after few months of the retreat could be a good and cost-effective way to communicate with the customers.

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A non-refundable registration fee of NT$2,000 per person (or per couple) is required upon reg-istration and holds your space. This is an administrative fee and is not deposit towards your room charges.

This savings package for a standard 5 days/4 nights is charged by NT$20,000. A nonrefundable deposit of one night will be charged to your card to hold your reservation.

4.3.3. Place

Shalom Retreat is located in Changbin Township, where is a rural township in Taitung County, on acres of tropical beauty on the southeast coast of Taiwan. Our retreat is a 45 minute drive from the Yuli Train Station, or a 2 hour drive from the airport in Hualien Station.

Chengbin is less crowded and less commercial than other township in Taitung, and offers a variety of spectacular natural attractions. You can see stunning the coastline. Cliffs drop straight into the ocean. Mountain ranges create breath-taking views. Valleys and gorges channel cob-blestones, sand and offshore winds into an array of quality river mouths, beach breaks, reefs and points. Besides, Shalom Retreat is located nearby Yuli Township, one of natural hot spring in Taiwan.

Whenever mention Township, Taitung Chengbin have a world-class, "Father Josef reflexology".

Wu Ruo Shi priest (Fr. Josef Eugster, 1940 - A) is one in Taiwan services Swiss nationality Catholic priest , is Bethlehem Foreign Missions , currently the Taitung County Chengbin parish director. He found the feet massage therapy and performed reflexology for Pope John Paul II, which is well known in the world.

4.3.4. Promotion

As discussed earlier in thesis, the promotion part of marketing mix is built from 4 activities, advertising, public relations, personal sale and sales promotions. These all must be included to the promotional mix, even though they might have different emphasize in it.

Shalom Retreats marketing budget is small, so there is no possibility for massive advertisement campaign. Shalom retreats have to focus their advertising on the target customers and consider

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the mediums which would be most effective to reach them. To attract foreigner, most effective channels would be the web-sites of the Wellness Tourism Worldwid(WTW) and TAITRA(外 貿協會). To have the membership in WTW could provide many consultant services for Shalom Retreat to understand what wellness travel is, promoting our wellness destination, tour or prop-erty to travel sellers, delivering coaching and training solution, understanding the needs, wants and motivations of the wellness traveler and define our market, advising and marketing direct to our consumers, designing wellness experiences and packages for our retreat, promoting our destination, tour, agency or property, and help us to organize a workshop, presentation or events.

To alliance with TAITRA could have an opportunity to set up the booth in big seminars, such as Taipei Computex. In Taipei Computex, there are average 30,000 foreign customers visit Taiwan in two weeks. In this period, we can design several service packages to attract potential foreign customers to join our Shalom Retreat.

One of the strongest parts of the promotional mix for Shalom Retreat should be the Employee Welfare Committee. To work with Employee Welfare Committee from top 100 companies, such as TSMC, we could try to design the appropriate service package for their existing top manages to create and strengthen the customer relationships and put the word out there.

Sales promotion can be launch in the beginning in order to attract new customers. As mentioned before, this is still not a solution for long term strategy but can help boost the sale. However, as discussed earlier price will not be a main factor of the marketing mix for the Shalom Retreat.

This will also mean that there is no need to put too much effort on these, as the service is mostly marketed by its quality, not by price.

As the Shalom Retreats is such a small company still, we would make more strategies to put right promotion resources in right communication channels.

4.3.5. People

Shalom Retreats will choose the concentrated marketing method to approach the chosen target market. The chosen primary target is 35-60 year old, who are from Native and Worldwide and have average or higher income level of NT$1millions annual salary. Vacationers we could at-tract would like to get the Heath, Happiness and Productivity from our retreat. We value the

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features offered by Shalom Retreat as train station transportation, accommodation, meals and extra activities of getting known of the local culture. This demographical group is the most common group of wellness tourists, but Shalom retreats want to target for more specific groups inside of this segment.

Shalom Retreat will firstly target our marketing to the top managers in the top of 100 enterprises in Taiwan. The communication interface could start from Employee Welfare Committee. For example, we should take more time on the discussion and investigation with TSMC Employee Welfare Committee to check the real demand and then design appropriate service package in price and product.

This is also part of the communication strategy, as the word of mouth is one of the most effec-tive ways of reach potential customer for such specific and small business as Shalom Retreats.

Second group would be the people who are passionate about natural life and are looking for professional meditation and experience from one’s holiday. Retreats can wider their marketing to different segments, with the differentiated offerings for new customers and “loyal” returning customers in the future.

In the service industry, the interaction what customers have with the staff is the key factor of how they do feel about the service afterwards. The service profit-chain illustrated perfectly how the choosing the right employees or partners can effect to your whole business. Shalom Retreats need to consider the marketing factors in terms of trilogy of marketing, where the internal and interactional marketing has great significance.

4.3.6. Physical Evidence

Because the Shalom retreat itself as a service is intangible in nature, Shalom Retreats needs to incorporate some tangible elements into the marketing mix. Physical evidence will have value to the customer and it builds up certain images in their heads, which they can talk about when going back home. Considering these factors, Shalom Retreats should made sure e.g. the car for picking up people from the train station is clean and proper, facilities are clean and well main-tained, or there will be always fresh flowers it the breakfast table. Other physical evidence can be retreat brochures and business card.

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In example of Shalom Retreats process part of the marketing also includes the partners (em-ployees) and how well they are trained for their jobs. However in processes the responsibility lies with the owners as they need to plan a functional process strategy which describes how the service should be provided.

The service package from Shalom Retreat must be featured by Shalom brand.All linens and towels with Shalom mark must clear and fragrance. Natural soaps and toiletries must be com-posed with organic materials and are produced by local vendors. Meal offerings must be chosen by local fresh seafood and vegetables. The partners in service package need to dress the uniform with Shalom features and act professionally and effectively.