Introduction
The following is a report on youth as a target market in tourism and leisure industry. Tourism and leisure industry is popular with most young people. It looks into how the youths perceive tourism and leisure activities. It also looks into how companies wish to market their services to the youths and the approaches they can use to reach out this wide and robust market.
Background information
Most countries define a youth as an individual aged between eighteen years and thirty-five years, which is the time of transition from childhood to adulthood. Though many young people love pleasure and leisure activities most of them cannot afford to pay for the costs that are involved in tourism.
Tourism and leisure are considered by the youths as a preserve for the elderly who have retired, have no jobs and are not thinking much about future. However, with appropriate marketing youths can embrace tourism and leisure industry and enjoy such services without feeling as though it is waste of time.
Most of the youths view leisure and tourism as pleasure and consider engaging in travelling and leisure activities once they retire. However, they have participated in leisure activities through work related travels and holiday sponsorships from the companies they work for (Nicholas, 2007).
Travel is an aspect of growing and transiting to adulthood. The youths therefore engage in travel and adventure activities either as an informal group, school or as a personal initiative to visit friends, new places and learning about other cultures. Earlier this was not seen as part of tourism but time has made the youths a market for the growing tourism and leisure activities (Schultz, 2000).
Although the youths do not have high disposable income, they have energy and avenues of receiving resources from their friends, relative and even employment opportunities that give them a chance to satisfy their passion for leisure and adventure.
Because youth travels are usually in large groups as either school travel or an organizational travel, the tourist agencies that deal with this market enjoy economies of scale emanating from having a wide customer base (Nicholas, 2007).
With the advancement in technology, communication and transport systems, it is now possible to travel to many places at an affordable cost compared to the cost in ten years ago. Travel logistics are now not complicated and most of the countries accept that tourism is a major industry and therefore have little restrictions for people coming into the country as tourists.
The young population is looking for adventure and not the experience. Most of the young people travel to see new places and meet new people as well as learn new things (Nicholas, 2007). Any new place gives youths a lot of pleasure and sense of accomplishment.
For the elderly, travel rekindles old memories and nostalgic feeling about the previous experience or information they have about a particular place. This makes it easier for the companies targeting the youths to provide affordable adventures when focusing on adventure rather than experience (Clow, 2007).
Strategies for reaching out to the youths
There are marketing strategies that would suit any company that is focusing on the youths as their target market. The first step is having a positive strategy that involves social media. Most of the young people are well connected to the internet and are compliant with the modern technology.
To reach out to this group of people, it is necessary to have pay per click that will reach out to the young people (Strokes, 2010). These pages create publicity for the company and provide an opportunity for the company to display its services dealing with leisure as well as the destination where they take the youth travellers.
This is imperative as the pages provide a forum for potential tourists to identify a company that deals with the tour and travel activities through pictorial displays (Pickton, 2000).
The second strategy is that a company that wishes to reach out to the target market must interconnect with the youth population. It must have good colours, and images, which communicate to the young people. This is because to the youth, image has a lot of meaning.
Creating a youthful perception may involve having a strategy of employing youths to work in the tour agency. Such employees will interconnect and build a rapport with the youth easily as compared to the middle aged and the elderly (Gregory, 1997).
From the background information, it is evident that the youth love engaging in leisure and tourism activities as a group rather than as individuals. For the youths, tourism or travel activities involve leisure and adventure, as they are memorable.
Companies targeting the youth’s market must have a strategy of reaching out the youth groups in universities, churches or organizations that deal with young people. This is because such organizations have leisure activities or travel activities in their budgets and having them consider a particular tour and travel company as their choice company of travel is imperative (McDonald, 2007).
To reach out the youth population the company must also consider the public relation marketing approach. Public relations involve activities that elicit media reporting or publicity without directly paying for it. For instance, a company targeting the youth population must consider activities that elicit participation of the youth.
Such activities include sports, travel, and leisure activities that elicit the attention of the youth. Sponsoring a sporting activity such as a football match by paying tickets for youthful fans elicits high level of publicity, which makes the potential customers aware of the company and the services, which it provides.
Sponsoring college activities such as orientation week or an entertainment event in the university exposes the company to potential customers especially the student’s clubs and organizations that engage in travel activities.
The student population represents a potential market in the long term as once they are through with schooling and get into organizations where they may need to travel, the company will have the advantage of being the tour and travel company of their choice (Hofstede, 2001).
Tour and travel as well as leisure activities do not involve tour companies alone. They also involve the destinations, the hotels, the airline services used during that travel and other stakeholders such as tour guides.
These stakeholders should create experience for the youthful tourist, as they are likely to act as repeat customers if the experience, which they will have, is pleasurable, memorable and exciting (Holbeche, 2006).
Most of the elderly people visit places where they have gone before when young and they had a pleasurable and memorable experience which they would want to rekindle in their old age. Therefore, creating a memorable experience for the young people is imperative in making them lifetime clients of a particular destination (Strokes, 2010).
The youth are challenged by the fact that they do not have much information on various destinations and they only look for any available destination that will give them pleasure. Creating and providing information about the organization and destinations is critical in reaching out this target market.
Such information may be in brochures or mailing lists providing information about different tour destinations, the experiences that they provide as well as the cost of that experience (Morgan, 2006).
To reach out the youth as the target market, it may involve adjusting prices to fit the young people. As indicated earlier young people do not have, enough resources or money and they therefore look for the lowest priced destinations, which can provide the adventure and the experience they are looking for.
Because the young people may not be widely travelled, they rarely look for experience as much as for the adventure. Pricing the ticket packages, the hotels with a specific destination and experience for young people at affordable prices will be the winning edge for attracting the young people who want to have fun, pleasure while saving on the expenses (Clow, 2003).
Conclusion
The young people are an emerging market in the tourism industry and they cannot be underscored, Gone are the days when leisure and tourism was a preserve for the elderly people who had money and were enjoying their retirement packages. The youthful population wants to have leisure and adventure.
This market can be tapped by providing a good experience at an affordable price. Companies reaching out this target must focus on numbers and not only on the profit margin, as youths are markets similar to the mass market.
References
Clow, K. (2003). Integrated advertising for luxury items. New Jersey: Prentice Hall.
Clow, K. (2007). Integrated advertising, promotion, and marketing communications 3rd edition. London: Pearson Education.
Gregory, R. (1997). Leveraging the corporate brand. Chicago: NTC.
Hofstede, G. (2001). Culture’s consequences. California: Thousand Oaks.
Holbeche, L. (2006). Understanding change: Theory, implementation and success. London: Heinemann.
McDonald, M. (2007). Marketing plans (6th ed.). Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann.
Morgan, G (2006). Images of organization. London: Sage.
Nicholas, I. (2007). Youth tourism. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Pickton, D. (2000). Amada. Integrated marketing communications. New York: Prentice Hall.
Schultz, M. (2000). The expressive organization: Linking identity, reputation and the corporate brand. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Strokes, R. (2010). E-marketing: The essential guide to online marketing. New Jersey: McGraw Hill.