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Managing on Behaviour Diversity
A destination should be developed to cater to the type of cultural tourists expected and to provide different levels of engagement for different types of cultural tourists. The realization of different types of cultural tourists needs should be considered in product innovation and development for the target groups. Sinces the tourism product is a blend of elements within a destination, the elements can be natural, built, or cultural and social attractions (Robinson et al., 1996a). For instance, the tour operators developing and providing planning most suitable trip routes may combine a number of cultural activities, provide diverse information and guidance to meet different groups needs. It needs a vision on the future of cultural tourism, an understanding of the current trends in the tourism market and above all an innovative approach to product development. Furthermore, the awareness and realization should also be integrated in marketing strategies, the promotion of a wide variety of attractions using different messages to target the market. After their visiting, the destination needs “to recognize visitor experiences if they wish to capture repeat visits and stimulate recommendations, as well as provide a good core product.” (Page and Connell, 2006, p.182) Buhalis and Costa (2006b, p.242) also point out that “Transformation of tourism demand and consumer behaviours will gradually place customers in the driving seat of the industry and will require customer-centric strategies where consumers are empowered to build their experiences.”
In many case, when the tourist visits are short and they lack local knowkedge, it is a problem for tourists to make sense of the place, sometimes the culture differences and complexation, the language barriers confuses tourists who do not have the resources to develop a cultural understanding of the local society. In this context, the culture of the place is decentred from the culture product. Conversely, a destination manager should be aware about that the experience the destination provides which could be engineered to ‘transform’ the visitor. Cooper et al. (2008, pp.670-677) refer to Pine and Gilmore (1999) who describe that: “By transforming the nature of the visit to, say, sensitive natural sites, managers can change behaviour such that the visitor understands the nature of the site, and therefore is more inclined to protect it and behave in an appropriate way… while beginning to change the way the visitors behave.” Among the strategic issues of tourism planning, the restructuring of the tourist product and the improvement of the Kyoto’s’ international and national accessibility should assume dominant position. The essence and scope of restructuring the cultural and heritage tourist product lies in the diversification and qualitative upgrading of the tourist supply, in interweaving and interlinking tourism and other tourism-related sectoral activities into regionally or intraregional identifiable and differentiated tourist products, or integrated tourism activity complexes. The tourism authorizer should analysis the benefits, in term s of satisfaction and personal development, which time pressed consumers really want from their visits. In support of the restructuring process, the promotion of certain new or less developed types of tourism, is expected to utilize and mobilize existing idle and regionally diverse, tourist resources and conduce to increasing destinations’ competitiveness and share in the international tourist market.
One thing should be pointed out that, which is despite Kyoto being a significant cultural destination in Asia, and the “Outline of the Master Plan of Kyoto City – 2001-2010” has been published even seven years, their marketing strategy in Europe is not working sufficiently. The city of Kyoto is one of the most popular tourist spots in Japan, gets nearly 50 million Japanese visitors each year compared with only one million non-Japanese visitors, most of over-sea visitors are from Asia and America. As the writer experienced difficulties to finding the Kyoto travel information and instructions from a UK tour operator. Even a big company like Thomas Cook, had only one destination in Japan appearing on the Thomas Cook website which is Tokyo, no mention about Kyoto. Despite the number of tourists from the UK increasing from 15,000 in 1999 to 40,000 in 2006, its still a very small portion compare to the total figures of UK tourists travelling abroad every year. People may argue that it is because the UK is too far away from Japan, most tourists do not tend to travel too far from their country for reasons of time, cost and convenience. But according to JNTO ‘s (Japan National Tourist Organization) annual report, Kyoto attracted 250,400 American visitors who from even further distance in 2005, and the figure was increased to 451,267 in 2009.
In order to positing the industrial cultural and heritage product in the tourism market, new marketing strategies need to be developed. Can-Seng (2002, p.21) mentioned that “certain sites become tourist attractions because they offer experiences unique and different from tourists’ own ordinary experiences.” Coltman, M. M. (1989) also point out that the role played by tour wholesalers and travel agencies is the tourism products are also often located a fair distance from the customers, which requires intermediaries who can influence both the potential tourists and the tourist suppliers. For marketing to work there have to be appropriate connections between a destination and its market. Coltman, M. M. (1989, p.47) also suggested that: “There are strong links between tourist destinations and motivations for travel, and so such destinations must be planned around these motivations or visitor expectations. It is therefore obvious that no destination will appeal to all types of people; each tourist destination must develop its own characteristics to satisfy its appropriate segment or segments of the market.” As a result of globalazationa and mass media, people travel more today than ever before, for this reason, travelers are becoming more educated and are therefore looking for more in a destination than a decent hotel and a few attractions, potential visitors select their destination by collecting information from various sources. Under this circumstance, to be successful, Kyoto tourism authorities may needs to look back on what they have operated both in Europe and in America, require a range of methods, media, materials and management to identify and evaluate the differences of social life, travel habit, motivation, expectation and tourist behaviour between different continents, working more closely with local travel agents, using appropriate advertising, promotion, public relations and publicity methods to high light Kyoto its own characteristics, developing their attractiveness and marketing, promoting their uniqueness to attract target specific potential consumers.#p#分页标题#e#
The implementation of cultural policies is interdependent on many other development factors and policies and mainly on those which concern overcoming and improving the overall organizational competence of the administration and its planning effectiveness at different levels. Particularly in Kyoto where tourism has a strong socio-economic impact the present bureaucratic style and the far from comprehensive planning actions must be superseded in order to integrate cultural tourism into a truly sustainable destination development.
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