Marketing: the management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably.

Promotion: any form of communication that will raise awareness and knowledge about a product or service. Can be in form of advertising or campaigns.

Importance of marketing and promotion:

Brand image: the general impression or representation of a product/organisation/destination. This differentiates one brand from another, it helps in standing out from the competition.

Marketing allows businesses to identify their position in the market and set targets for future improvement and identify who the competitors are. It is important that travel and tourism organisations understand the specific groups of customers at whom their products and services are being targeted.

Five stage market research process:

Primary market research: also known as field research used to find out about customers experiences and expectations. Primary research methods include self completion questionnaires or telephone and internet surveys. advantages of primary market research are That you get new and relevant data based on the current trends in the market and you can design your own research based on your needs. disadvantages include that it can be very time-consuming and expensive to attain.

Secondary market research: also known as desk research as it involves using existing information that has been collected by the third-party for a different purpose for using data from organisations own records. Can be internal, data from the organisations own sales records or customer database. Can be external, which might include government produced data or reports.Advantages can be that it's very cheap and doesn't take much time. Disadvantages can be that date it might be old and irrelevant as of the current time and trends.

SWOT analysis: Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats. The process involved in carrying out this analysis is often referred to as situation analysis, this enables a travel and tourism provider to identify the positive and negative influences on its business activities. Can be used to identify internal influences which are within our control and external influences which are beyond control.

PEST analysis: political, economic, social, technological. This analysis allows an organisation to identify any influences on the market which are beyond its control. By identifying these factors, a tourism provider is better placed to deal with competition. Political factors include government, civil unrest and terrorism. Economic factors include economy of the country and exchange rates. Social factors include health, crime and attitude of local population. Technological factors include infrastructure of the country and internet.

Different market segments: