BY HELEN J CATALBAS
SHOW US the numbers and we will tell you about the quality of your travel products.
Let us focus on tourism in today’s issue.
Lousy and tired tourism products do not attract travellers who utilize air, land and sea transport.
This goes without saying that good transportation facilities alone cannot deliver. It has to be the tourism product. Nothing less.
One author defined tourism product as the total experience that a tourist has from the time he / she leaves home to the time he / she returns to it.
Let us clarify here that we are referring to day-to-day all-year-round tourism products and not to once-a-year festivals, some of which are amazing and great white others half-baked and no better than high school projects or studies.
Unreliable sea transport schedules can be attributed to low-grade tourism products on both point of origin and point of destination and vice versa. This is attributable to poor tourism products or travel products as a whole.
On the other hand, if the products are good, it can be poor marketing or no marketing at all that is to blame.
Investors on travel transportation business, therefore, should first determine the variety and quality of the products available in their point of origin and point of destination and vice versa to ensure shorter return on investment. They should also review their marketing strategies.
Government should strongly be a catalyst in the development, strengthening and sustainability of travel products to guarantee a robust load factor for the transport business.
This way, everybody will be happy. (HJC/PN)
