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UNIVERSITY OF TOULOUSE –
JEAN JAURES
TOULOUSE SCHOOL OF TOURISM,
HOSPITALITY MANAGEMENT AND FOOD STUDIES
MASTER’S DEGREE TOURISM AND HOSPITALITY
MAJOR “TOURISM AND DEVELOPMENT”
Master’s dissertation of the second year
Innovation and experiential marketing, an approach for
quality tourism products
The case of a Maltese excursion operator
Submitted by:
Charlène BRUNET
Supervised by: Paul-Emmanuel PICHON
Academic year: 2014-2015
Innovation and experiential
marketing, an approach for quality
tourism products
The case of a Maltese excursion
operator
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
First of all, I would like to deeply thank Dylan, my line manager and director of Colour
my Travel, for welcoming me in this company. His professionalism, availability, help,
good mood and smile allowed me to work in a privileged environment. I really
enjoyed collaborating and working with this nice and very interesting person.
I express my gratitude to all my colleagues: Alexiei, Christine, Anna, Jennifer, Matteo,
Gabriel and Matthew. All of them are great people that I will never forget for sure!
Another special thank you goes to Matteo who helped me in the correction of my
English in the writing of my dissertation.
I would like to thank Mr. Pichon, my dissertation’s supervisor, for his expertise, his
advice and his help.
I am grateful to the people I have interviewed: customers, guides, James and the
members of Ghost Squad Malta.
A huge and general “grazzi”1 to all the Maltese people I met: their friendliness and
their welcoming personality were part of the good moments I spent in Malta!
1
Thank you in Maltese.
5
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .................................................................................................................. 5
CONTENTS ....................................................................................................................................... 6
GENERAL INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................... 7
PART I: OFFER TOURISM PRODUCTS BASED ON QUALITY THROUGH
INNOVATION AND EXPERIENTIAL, CASE OF GHOST TOURISM AND GHOST
TOUR ...................................................................................................................................................... 11
Chapter 1. Destination’s tourist offer, the case of Malta ......................................................12
Chapter 2. Innovation and experiential marketing: how to use them in a tourism
product, the case of a guided tour?................................................................................................24
Chapter 3. The ghost tour: a key product in a niche and innovative market ..............36
PART II: COLOUR MY TRAVEL, A STRATEGY FOCUSED ON INNOVATION AND
ORIENTATED TOWARDS EXPERIENTIAL MARKETING ................................................ 51
Chapter 1. Mission at Colour My Travel.......................................................................................52
Chapter 2. Marketing strategy of Colour My Travel and methodology .........................62
Chapter 3. Marketing strategy, tours and mix-marketing ..................................................76
PART III: THE GHOST TOUR, A KEY PRODUCT TO ENHANCE EXPERIENTIAL
MARKETING ........................................................................................................................................ 88
Chapter 1. Understand opinions and expectations regarding the product ..................89
Chapter 2. Ghost tour and mix-marketing: how to offer this product? ....................... 104
Chapter 3. The perspectives in the future with a dark tourism branch and
assessment of the mission ............................................................................................................... 111
GENERAL CONCLUSION ..........................................................................................................123
BIBLIOGRAPHY .........................................................................................................................125
TABLE OF APPENDICES ..........................................................................................................130
TABLE OF FIGURES ..................................................................................................................166
TABLE OF CONTENTS ..............................................................................................................168
6
GENERAL INTRODUCTION
The present dissertation introduces the mission completed within the company
Colour My Travel. This mission was focused on the business development of tours
and innovation in guided tours and how to orientate it towards an experiential
marketing. Last year, in my dissertation called “Le marketing expérientiel ou comment
promouvoir une destination à forte symbolique imaginaire – cas du tourisme de l’effroi
en Ecosse” (2014), I have studied the stakes of experiential marketing attached to a
destination’s promotion. As I am also specialized in spooky tourism, I was really
interested in choosing a case study focused on Colour My Travel’s ghost tour. This
case study will be approached in Part III. Therefore, we can say that there is a
continuity from last year and my interest in spooky tourism and experiential
marketing to this year with the work placement at Colour My Travel and this new
dissertation. I also consider my professional future to be closely linked to these two
areas, which are experiential marketing and niche and innovative types of tourism.
Colour My Travel is an Organised Excursion Operator based in Malta. The company
offers several themed and innovative guided tours, mainly in Valletta, the Capital city.
Colour My Travel is a start-up and was created very recently (founded in 2013). As a
consequence, the company needed a proper marketing strategy to base on for a
future business development. This marketing strategy includes, in particular,
suggestions of improvement for the current tours, suggestions for new tours, as well
as the opening of a new branch dedicated to dark tourism.
As an innovative, young and growing company, it was important to build a marketing
strategy based on innovation but with some orientations towards experiential
marketing in order to reinforce the singularity of the products, respond to
competitiveness, and satisfy the demand of experiences from the tourists. The case
study of the ghost tour can be used as a template to improve other tours using an
experiential marketing’s angle. Apart from contributing to the development of a
company focused on innovation, it was interesting to work in Malta. Malta is a
country where tourism is increasing very quickly; in this way offering unusual tours
7
based on innovation and experiential marketing can make Colour My Travel stand out
from the competitors even more in the destination.
The initial question before writing the present dissertation was the following:
How to attract customers thanks to innovation and experiential marketing?
This question later brought us to two research problems mentioned at the end of Part
I. Through bibliography research, quantitative and qualitative surveys, market
research, observation and meetings, we tried to understand how to add more
experiential marketing in a company that was already innovative and how to improve
and extend a global offer through the combination of both innovation and
experiential marketing.
The following figure illustrates the methodology and how the information was
collected to answer the initial question:
Fig.1 Methodological scheme
Key concepts
Marketing
strategy
Study case:
ghost tour
•Literature and research
•Personal experience
•Literature and research
•Martket research
•Observation
•Regular meetings within Colour My Travel's
director
•Literature and research
•Observation
•Personal experience
•Quantitative surveys
•Qualitative surveys
Source: Charlène BRUNET
8
Therefore, I used several materials and ways to help me answer the mission of this
work placement.
As for the language, this dissertation was written integrally in English. I chose
English for several reasons:
1) For Colour My Travel
I wanted my dissertation to be useful for the company. As it is a Maltese and an
English-speaking company, I thought it was not appropriate to write it in French as a
sign of respect for my director. Moreover, working in a foreign country also requires
us to adapt to the foreign language.
2) A personal challenge
Writing a dissertation in another language was like a challenge for me. I really like
English and I really wanted to produce a work in a language other than in French
because I like challenges and not doing standard things.
3) English is crucial in tourism
As an international industry, tourism requires that we speak in several languages,
especially in English. Therefore, writing a dissertation in English could be important
to make the research progress visible at an international level.
As regards the logic of the dissertation, it articulates in three main parts and
appendices are reachable at the end of the file. First of all, it was important to make a
lot of research and use my experience in spooky tourism and experiential marketing
to define the key concepts which are the following:
-
Innovation in tourism
-
Experiential marketing
-
Guided tours
-
Dark and ghost tourism
These concepts are defined in Part I. This part is really important to
understand precisely the areas we will discussing and analysing later on throughout
this dissertation.
Part II was dedicated to the company and to the main mission of this
internship which was the proposal of a global marketing strategy suitable for Colour
My Travel. This marketing strategy is based on innovation and tries to address issues
from an experiential marketing’s angle.
9
This experiential marketing’s angle was especially studied in Part III with the
case study of Colour My Travel’s ghost tour. This product could then be used as a
template for the other tours in order to develop more experiential marketing in them.
10
PART I: OFFER TOURISM
PRODUCTS
BASED
ON
QUALITY
THROUGH
INNOVATION
AND
EXPERIENTIAL,
CASE
OF
GHOST TOURISM AND GHOST
TOUR
11
INTRODUCTION PART I
Nowadays, competitiveness in Tourism is increasing particularly due to emerging
tourist destinations, changes in tourists’ expectations and New Information and
Communication Technologies (NICT)’s role. Today, tourists always expect more
quality and more experience when they consume a tourism product. Instead of only
consuming the product, they want to live an experience with the help of this product.
A tourism product is often linked to a destination and, as a result, it is important to
understand what a destination is and the range of activities and products it can offer
to tourists. Here, we will focus on the case of Malta. We need to keep in mind that the
more a tourism product is innovative, the more the tourists may be curious of this
because they avoid standard products. Moreover, an innovative product can also be
oriented to experiential marketing and, in this way, people may be attracted by new
things to experience thanks to the product. The ghost tour can be an example of an
innovative and quality tourism product for a destination that can deliver a true
experience to the customers and, as a result, be considered through an experiential
marketing.
Chapter 1. Destination’s tourist offer, the case of
Malta
Introduction
The success of a destination for the tourists depends on its heritage and its good
preservation, its good promotion, its services, its accessibility (transportation,
security, price, and signposting) and, last but not least, its range of quality tourism
products. The guided tour, for example, is a component of the destination’s global
offer, and its quality is really important to produce good and value visits to the
tourists.
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1.1 Destination’s global tourist offer
1.1.1 The tourism destination: how to define it?
A destination can be defined by a spatial unity that attracts people, excluding
inhabitants, travelling several kilometres to arrive in the destination (MAUNIER
Cécile, 2007). They are tourists who create a destination; in this way a destination
cannot be a destination originally. We need to build the destination and consequently
invest money, understand the tourist’s expectations and make marketing efforts in
order to make it growing.
However, to become a good tourism destination, an area needs to have
attractive features and characteristics to make tourists come and stay at least for a
few days. Therefore, a destination needs to have a tourism potential and attractive
assets. It is important to remember that a destination is a macro product because it is
a tourism and polymorphous product (TOCQUER Gérard, ZINS Michel, HAZEBROUCQ
Jean-Marie, 1999). In this way, it is composed of several tourism products and
services. Consequently, it is a necessity to work on all the departments of tourism
products and services connected to the destination to make a good and successful
macro product.
1.1.2 The tourism product: 2 dimensions
The tourism product can be defined at two different scales. First of all, it consists
of a bundle of activities, services and benefits of a global tourism experience; in this
way it refers to the destination (the macro product) and the micro products that
compose it. The tourism product also refers to the specific offer of a company. As a
result, the tourism product can be a total of consumptions for the tourist during his
travel but, on the other hand, it can also be a specific product that is a subsection of
the total product (e.g. accommodation, restaurants, attractions, etc.), (MEDLIK &
MIDDLETON, 1973). Indeed, it is the bundle of specific products that makes the total
product for a destination and that will provide the travel experience to the tourists.
In other words, every tourism product has its importance in the global bundle
and in the global perception of the consumption experience from the tourists’ point of
13
view. Therefore, the tourism product is what it is sold to increase value for a
destination or a company. A tourism product can be evaluated by the consumers, so it
needs to be a quality product to maximise the satisfaction. We can say that tourism
products are the transition between tourists’ expectations and the tourism business
offer to satisfy the demand. That is to say, tourism products are means to satisfy the
demand and increase the business.
1.1.3 The tourism product in the cultural area
Tourism is often practised with a cultural aim. In other words, tourists often
travel to discover the cultural heritage of an area and use different ways to
accomplish this goal including visiting museums, attending events or participating in
guided tours, for instance. The tourism products in the cultural area can be for
example: an exhibition in an Art gallery, an access to a Heritage Interpretation Centre
or a walking tour in a capital city.
The tourism products in the cultural area are crucial to glorify the local
history, the famous local characters, and the heritage of a specific destination. They
help in the tourists’ knowledge of a destination and are a good means to aid them in
discovering the local inhabitants' identity. In this dissertation, we will focus on
specific tourism products: the guided tours.
1.1.4 The tourists’ expectations regarding the tourism product quality
As regards the tourists’ expectations, these last few years, it has become
evident that there has been an evolution of the customers’ demand, including in the
cultural area. Indeed, customers are now inclined to live an experience and look for
the beauty, emotions, and sensations. It is the reason why people are now motivated
to less see and more live moments. It is important to offer triggers to customers'
mental access and give them access to a past that emotion transforms to a memory
that they have never known (Cahiers Espaces, Tourisme et Culture, 1994).
In order to offer moments and experiences to live to the customers, it is
important to think hard on the products we are going to sell on the market. The
products need to be attractive and arouse the targets’ curiosity. In this way, it is
14
interesting and relevant to lead an innovative and quality policy of products. In the
next chapter, we will see what innovation is, and how we can develop an experiential
marketing in addition to an innovation policy for a better value of products.
1.2 The guided tour: a major product for a destination
1.2.1 What is a guided tour?
A guided tour is a visit in a specific area conducted by a guide providing
information about the sights being viewed2. A guided tour can take place by walking
or by other means of transportation: cycling, horse-riding, rollers, Segway3, etc…
There are also sightseeing bus tours or cruises with a guide but sometimes the
comments are broadcasted by an audio guide. The areas and sites where the guided
tour is held can also be various. In this way, there are guided tours in museums,
castles, national parks or in historic city centres, for example.
In spite of their differences, all the guided tours have the same structure: a
guide, a group of visitors, and a discursive object which is the point of interest for
both the guide and the visitors (DUFIET Jean-Paul, 2012). The guide is responsible
for the speech and for the visit. The visitors are the recipients of the speech. The
discursive object is the motivation factor for why the visitors attend the guided tour.
2
Travel
Industry
Dictionary
[online].
Available
on :
dictionary.com/walking-tour.html> (Consulted on 15-05-2015).
3 One-man electric vehicle
15
<http://www.travel-industry-
Fig.2 The guided tour’s structure
Guide
Discursive
object
Visitors
Source: Charlène Brunet, inspired from DUFIET Jean-Paul, Les visites guidées :
Discours, interaction, multimodalité, 2012
Hence, there are three elements that make up the guided tour. Both the guide
and the visitors are focused on the discursive object, however, the guide and the
visitors can also have an interaction. Indeed, the tour is firstly a monologal type4 but
it is also a dialogical type5 because the visitors and the guide can communicate
between them. As a result, we can say the guided tour is both a monologal and
dialogical type (DETRIE, SIBLOT, VERINE, 2001).
1.2.2 Heritage in the heart of tourism guided tours
The guided tours are sometimes themed and focused on a specific history’s
period or event, a famous character or even a special atmosphere and a sort of tours
(e.g. ghost tours). Despite these differences, it is important that the guided tour
reflects the local history or heritage (past, present or future as well).
When a guided tour is conducted in a city, the guide often stops at the main
landmarks of the place. These landmarks are mainly monuments, squares, statues,
4
5
Refers to monologue.
Refers to dialogue.
16
small elements of interest that are related to an event, a character, or a story (e.g.: an
old poster in a street, a mark of a bullet in a wall etc…).
1.2.3 Some rules to follow for more quality tours
With regards to the quality of the tour, there are some rules to respect. From
my experience as a guide, I know some of them are essential. In this way, it is
important that the number of attendants is not too high. Colour My Travel, for
example, wants its audience under 30 people for each tour. This provides a better
quality because the guide can better manage a small group and the visitors are more
comfortable to follow and hear the guide. Another important thing is that the guide
needs to adapt to different types of audiences: adults, students, children, business
men, seniors, disabled people, etc. Ideally, the tour would be conducted in several
languages (at least one foreign language in addition to the local language).
1.2.4 The importance of the guide for a good quality of tours
The guide talks, tells, describes, explains, shows, and comments. In this way,
the guide is considered as a teller and the visitor as a listener (DUFIET Jean-Paul,
2012). More than a teller, the guide needs to be a good storyteller especially for tours
dealing with legends, ghost stories, and anecdotes, for example. A good storytelling
helps building a special atmosphere for the audience who would, in turn, be able to
imagine better the stories and the context of the stories told. Thus, it favours the
imagination.
Apart from conducting the tour, the guide normally creates his own visit, his own
speech. As a result, he would need to know perfectly the local history but not only
this. He needs to know some interesting, and not well known, stories to tell so as to
add value to his speech. Basically, he needs to provide information and stories that
tourists cannot find in books or by themselves. Moreover, he needs to have a warm
attitude to people, be dynamic and captive the audience. He has to adapt to the
17
audience as well as to the tour. If one takes the ghost tour as an example, the guide
needs to play a little bit with the tourists’ emotions and fear.
In this dissertation, we will focus on the guided tours offered by the company
Colour My Travel in Malta. Therefore, it is important to introduce the destination and
to see its assets that can be key success factors to attract tourists and to make them
participate in the guided tours.
1.3 Malta destination
1.3.1 Presentation & geography
Malta is a country located in the Mediterranean Sea, just to the south of Sicily.
The surface area of Malta is 314 square kilometers and it is composed of six main
islands: Malta, Gozo, Comino, Cominotto, Filfla and Manuel Island6. The capital city is
Valletta and it is the smallest capital city of the European Union. The recorded
population of Malta on the 1st January 2015 was recorded to be 424, 204 people. This
makes the country one of the most densely populated in the world with 1, 346 people
per km²7.
As regards geography, Malta enjoys a Mediterranean climate with cool
temperatures all year long and fairly dry summer months. As a result, the landscapes
in Malta are characterized by limestone and dry vegetation. The coastline is mainly
composed of rocky cliffs and some sandy beaches in the north of Malta. Malta does
not have rivers or mountains; the highest point is situated in Ta'Zuta, and rises to 830
feet that is to say 253 meters.
1.3.2 Malta: a fascinating history
Malta has been independent since 1964 and has been forming part of the
European Union since 2004. Throughout its history, the country has witnessed
numerous civilisations that came visited and conquered its lands; among them: the
Phoenicians, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Angevines, Aragonese, Order of St John,
In Appendix A : Malta’s map
Statistics
Office,
Malta
in
figures
[online].
<https://nso.gov.mt/.../Malta_in_Figures_2014.pdf> (Consulted on 20-06-2015).
6
7National
18
Available
on:
French and British. Today, this allows Malta to benefit from a particular identity with
a multicultural heritage and perspective that varies from traditions and linguistic
features inherited from these civilisations.
The Knights of St Johns deeply left their mark on Malta’s history. They formed
a religious order called the Order of St John of Jerusalem. From Rhodes, they came to
Malta in 1530. An important event that occurred in the same century, was the Great
Siege that took place on 1565 and saw the Knights and the Maltese fighting against
the Ottomans, who had come to invade the country. The most famous Grand Master,
Jean De Valette, was the leader during the Great Siege. Malta was victorious during
this Siege and it was De Valette who decided to build Valletta, the actual capital city,
just six months after this event. The main motivation was the importance of a
fortified city that could withstand such another attack.
1.3.3 A destination with an array of tourist assets
1.3.3.1 Practical assets
The national language of Malta is Maltese, a fascinating Semitic structured
language with a major part of its words deriving from Arabic yet written in the Latin
alphabet, while boasting of a rich vocabulary originating from European languages
such as Italian and French. In the Constitution of Malta of 1964, it is specifically
written that Malta has two official languages: Maltese and English. The fact that Malta
is an English-speaking country is a strong point for foreigner visitors. Apart from this,
Malta attracts a lot of young people and students who come here to learn English. In
this way, there are about 60 English language schools in Malta that provide English
courses and leisure activities; among them we can mention Britannia College,
ClubClass or EF International. Malta’s Minister of Tourism confirms that English
language is an undeniable strong point for Malta as “the English language is a passport
to the world”8. Malta also has the Euro currency, which favours the easy accessibility
to the country. Another practical asset is that the country is quite small so tourists can
visit it easily by bus or by renting a car.
8 The WorldFolio, The evolution of tourism in Malta, Interview of Dr Edward Zammit Lewis, Malta’s
Minister of Tourism [online]. Available on: <http://www.theworldfolio.com/interviews/edwardzammit-lewis-malta-minister-of-tourism-n3148/3148/> (Consulted on 15-06-2015).
19
1.3.3.2 Types of tourism
Many types tourism can be practised in Malta that can suit several kinds of
tourists. Among them, we can list the most popular ones:
a) Beach and summer tourism
Thanks to its coastline, its numerous beaches (e.g. Golden Bay, Mellieħa Bay or Ramla
Bay in Gozo) and the wonderful colour of its waters, Malta is a privileged destination
for summer holidays and for beach tourism. Comino and its blue lagoon are
particularly appreciated and are one of the must-see places in Malta. A range of
cruises is also available throughout the country to enjoy the sea view or to visit caves
in rocky cliffs.
b) Nature tourism
Malta has breath-taking points of view on the Mediterranean Sea but also on the
countryside, such as in Gozo. Malta has also some nature reserves as Għadira Reserve
which was declared a bird sanctuary. Incredible nature spots that reminds you of a
paradisiacal destination can be admired; this is good for the imagination and to take
photos of attractions like Azure Window or Blue lagoon.
c) Cultural tourism
Malta has many remains from Prehistoric and Antiquity periods such as numerous
temples. Valletta is labelled as a UNESCO world heritage site and is the European
capital of culture for 2018. Malta has also beautiful cities to visit such as Mdina, a nice
medieval city. It is in the cultural tourism that the guided tours can develop and need
to be of high quality to satisfy people in demand of this kind of cultural activities.
d) Party and event tourism
Malta is popular for its nightlife especially in Paceville, an area in St Julians dedicated
to partying. There, people find a range of bars and nightclubs. Malta also offers
famous events such as Carnival, Fireworks Festival, Jazz Festival, religious events or
the big MTV island festival.
e) Religious tourism
There is a range of religious events throughout Malta such as the Maltese Festa or the
Imnarja. In Malta, tourists can visit more than 300 churches and enjoy wonderful
architecture and beautiful pieces of art. The most breathtaking religious monument is
undoubtedly St John’s Co-Cathedral in Valletta built by the Knights of Malta. This high
20
Baroque church was designed by Girolamo Cassar and contains eight beautiful
chapels that remind us of the eight language sections of the Knights:
-
Chapel of Provence
-
Chapel of France
-
Chapel of Italy
-
Chapel of Germany
-
Chapel of Auvergne
-
Chapel of Aragon, Catalonia and Navarre
-
Chapel of Castille, Leon and Portugal
-
Chapel of the Anglo-Bavarian language
In the Oratory, visitors can also admire two masterpieces of Caravaggio9: The
Beheading of St John the Baptist and St Jerome.
f) Sport tourism
A lot of outdoor activities can be found in Malta such as hiking, scuba diving, fishing
or even climbing. As regards scuba diving, tourists can enjoy a rich marine flora and
fauna in the Maltese waters as well as some exceptional remains as a statue of Christ
between Malta and Gozo.
As a result, Malta benefits from a good number of key success factors for
tourism and can attract different types of tourists with different aims and motivations
for visiting the country thanks to a range of tourism products.
1.3.4 The situation of tourism in Malta
Malta’s tourism is managed by the Malta Tourism Authority (MTA). Its role is:
-
To promote Malta as a tourism destination
-
To advise Government on tourism operations
-
To improve the level of human resources in the tourism industry
-
To advise government on the planning and development of the tourism
industry10
9
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, famous Italian painter (1571-1610)
21
The MTA regularly provides statistics about tourism in the destination.
Concerning the number of arrivals in Malta, the destination welcomed 1,689,809
tourists in 2014 (an increase of 6.8% compared to 2013). From a general point of
view, tourism has significantly increased this few last years. This shows that Malta
attracts more and more tourists through years. Below, a figure demonstrates the
increase of arrivals in Malta from 2010.
Fig.3 Number of tourist arrivals in Malta from 2010 to 2014
TOURISTS ARRIVALS IN MALTA
Tourists arrivals in Malta
1 800 000
1 700 000
1 600 000
1 689 809
1 500 000
1 582 000
1 400 000
1 300 000
1 415 000
1 443 000
1 339 000
1 200 000
1 100 000
1 000 000
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
Source: Charlène Brunet, according to MTA and Word Tourism Organization
(UNWTO) statistics
Despite this success, the arrivals are not evenly spread across the year. According
to the 2014 statistical report of the Malta Tourism Authority, the destination has a
main period where more than 130,000 tourists come every month (from April to
October included). This brings us to the main issue of the destination that is its
seasonality. Some solutions to the struggle against seasonality would be the
development of niche markets and the strengthening of the events calendar during
winter.
10 Malta Tourism Authority [online]. Available on: < http://www.tourism.gov.mt/> (Consulted on 2005-2015).
22
Regarding, the tourists’ countries of origin, the main part comes from Europe
(51.8%) and the great majority among European tourists, by descending order, comes
from Great Britain, Italy, Germany and France. Malta welcomes also a lot of cruise
liners and in 2013, a total of 482,242 cruise passengers stopped in the country.
If we now focus on tourists’ motivations to visit Malta, it is interesting to note the
main motivations for choosing Malta, which are listed below in descending order11:
1- The agreeable climate (57%)
2- A new place to go (46.7%)
3- History and culture (39.2%)
4- Value for money (32.1%)
5- Result of previous visit (23.8%)
6- English speaking country (19.5%)
7- Accessibility (18.8%)
8- Recommended by friends or relatives (18.6%)
9- Maltese hospitality (13.5%)
We notice that the climate is a decisive factor for the main part of visitors mainly
due of the success of beach tourism in the destination. History and culture are also
really important, which is a strong point for guided tours running in Malta.
For a destination, all the tourism products are important to make the destination
attractive and successful as a whole. Among these tourism products, the guided
tour is a key product for the cultural area. Malta is a tourism destination with
strong assets and its very rich cultural background is one of the reasons people
visit the destination. Hence, thinking of good quality guided tours in Malta is
essential to satisfy the demand from the tourists. In order to offer quality guided
tours, innovation and experiential marketing can be interesting approaches to
respond to the tourists’ demand and to develop value for a tourism business
company.
11 Malta Tourism Authority, Tourism in Malta edition 2014 [PDF online]. Available on:
<http://www.tourism.gov.mt/> (Consulted on 20-05-2015).
23
Chapter 2. Innovation and experiential marketing:
how to use them in a tourism product, the case of a
guided tour?
Introduction
As tourists are now looking for experiences before simple products, and as they are
more and more demanding regarding the quality, it is important to be innovative.
Innovation can allow a product to stand out from its competitors and can be a base to
develop an experiential marketing that offers bigger and better experiences to the
tourists.
2.1 Innovation in tourism
2.1.1 Innovation: how to define it?
In the Oslo Manual 3rd edition, innovation is described as an “implementation of
a new or significantly improved product (good or service), or process, a new marketing
method, or a new organizational method in business practices, workplace organization
or external relations” (OSLO MANUAL: guidelines for collecting and interpreting
innovation data, OECD/European communities, 2005). The main need for an
innovation is that the product, process, marketing method or organizational method
must be new (or significantly improved) to the company.
However, before offering an innovation, we need to have “A new idea, method, or
device. The act of creating a new product or process includes invention as well as the
work required to bring an idea or concept into final form” (MCNEALY, 2004). In this
way, it is the idea at the beginning that is the first step of creating the innovative
product, process, marketing method, or organisational method.
24
2.1.2 The different types of innovation
According to the Oslo Manual, there exist four types of innovation. An innovation can
be linked to:
a) A product
It relates to the introduction of a new product or improved one with respect to its
characteristics or intended uses. This includes improvements of the product’s
specifications and its functional characteristics.
b) A process
It is about the implementation of a new or significantly improved production or
delivery method.
c) Marketing
It deals with the implementation of a new organizational business method in product
design or packaging, product placement, product promotion or pricing system.
d) Organisation
It is about the implementation of a new organisational method in the business’s
practices, workplace organisation or external relations.
Thus, innovation can be present in the whole company: from its organization to
the products that it offers to the clients.
2.1.3 What is the utility of innovation?
Before launching an innovative approach for a company, it is important to know
what innovation can bring us in terms of benefits, and be aware of its utility in a
business development.
As regards the potential consumers and customers, we need to highlight that
people are now seeking unusual things and novelty in their consumption. They refuse
more and more standard products. In this way, innovative products bring novelty to
people who will, in turn, become even more curious about what the company has to
offer. As a result, innovation can be a key success for competitiveness. The American
Society for Quality reinforces this with its definition of innovation: “…the successful
conversion of new concepts and knowledge into new products, services, or processes
25
that deliver new customer value in the marketplace.”
Innovation is a force in
marketing especially when it comes to answering to a competitor's product or
service. Innovative processes and marketing also allow for a better way to respond to
the demand. Innovation can also improve and develop the company’s image because
it will have a different image to show than the one from the competitors. Indeed,
innovation can bring more dynamism and modernism in the company’s image.
Beyond competitiveness, innovation is also useful inside the company through
organisational methods, for example. The company can adapt an innovative
organisational method to its own uses. For instance, if we have an innovative
organisational method for the Human Resources department, we can improve the
internal forces of the company. Moreover, innovation can open new opportunities of
development for the company because it allows new issues, new objectives, and new
ideas for the future business development to emerge.
2.1.4 Innovation in tourism
Innovation can be present in every industry. In our case, we will focus on
innovation in tourism, in particular in guided tours.
In tourism, innovation is developed in many areas: processes, types and new
forms of tourism, hosting business, creation and production, policies and governance,
marketing and promotion, information and communication technologies, etc. The
following figure illustrates innovation in tourism.
26
Fig.4 Innovation involved in tourism
E.g. Distribution
Processes
Types and forms of tourism
E.g. Ghost tourism
E.g. Hotels in lighthouses
Hosting business
E.g. Innovative guided tours
Creation and production
E.g. Collaborative platform
between tourism
stakeholders
Policies and governance
E.g. Olfactive guidebook at
the tourist office of York
(England)
Marketing and promotion
Information and communication technologies
E.g. Augmented reality,
virtual reality
Source: Charlène Brunet
In tourism, we can speak of innovation in many areas of the industry.
Consequently, innovation is an opportunity to differentiate in the tourism market in
various ways. For example, some companies can stand out from competitors thanks
to really innovative products while others through a really unusual and attractive
marketing campaign.
Innovation is a good means to offer unusual products, however, if the company
wants to go further in its offer, it can also develop an experiential market and focus
on customer’s emotions, sensations, and experiences. As a result, the company will
work on its innovative product and integrate key features that would allow it to
stimulate the customers’ consumption experience.
27
2.2. Experiential marketing in tourism
2.2.1 Experiential marketing: to go beyond the simple products’
attributes
While standard marketing is focused on cognitive aspects of a costumer’s
behaviour and attitude, experiential marketing is oriented towards emotional and
aesthetic pleasure that the customers can experience during their product or service’s
consumption. Hence, experiential marketing revolves more around the effective
aspects than the cognitive aspects. Elizabeth HIRSCHMAN and Morris HOLBROOK
(1982) confirm this by saying that the basic consumption becomes hedonic. People
are now looking for a product or service with a certain emotional content. The lived
experience is even more important than the consumed product or service on its own
(BOURGEON Dominique, FILSER Marc, 1993).
2.2.2 The main pillars of experiential marketing
Consumers are in search of sense, the unexpected and surprise. They are
receptive and sensitive and are waiting for experiences that arouse their emotions.
According to Patrick HETZEL (Planète Conso : Marketing expérientiel et nouveaux
univers de consommation, 2002), the levers of the consumption experience are :
a) Surprising: suggest an unusual offer that can break the consumer’s routine and
everyday life.
b) Offering the extraordinary: the consumer needs to be dumbstruck in front of
gigantism, enchantment, authenticity, futurism, the magical, the fantastic,
historicism, and nostalgia.
c) Stimulating the five senses: an intense sensorial experience around a
particular atmosphere and universe.
d) Creating social links: concept of proximity and interaction between the
consumer and the organisation.
e) Using the brand to support the experiential aspect: to base on the brand’s
values and what it can bring to the consumer.
28
In order to outline the five pillars of the experiential offer, Patrick HETZEL created
“The experiential wheel”. Below is an illustration of this one:
Fig.5 The experiential wheel
Surprising
Using the brand to
support
experiential
Offering the
extraordinary
Creating social
links
Stimulating the
five senses
Source : HETZEL Patrick, 2002
2.2.3 Experiential marketing and the consumer: a long process from the
pre-consumption to the post-consumption
We can wonder how the consumer lives his consumption experience. What is the
process on the consumer’s side regarding the consumption experience? Arnould et al.
(2002) have suggested four main stages in the consumption’s experience:
a) The pre-consumption experience: searching information, planning, daydreaming about, foreseeing, and imagining the experience.
b) The purchase experience: choosing, paying, packaging, and discovering the
service and the environment.
c) The
core
consumption
experience:
sensations,
emotions,
the
satisfaction/dissatisfaction.
d) The remembered consumption: nostalgia experience, sharing the experiences
with stories to tell and photographs to show, classification of memories.
29
Fig.6 The four stages in the experience’s consumption
Pre-consumption
The purchase
experience
•searching
•imagining
•dreaming
•choice
•payment
The core
consumption
The remembered
consumption
•sensations
•emotions
•opinions
•memories
•sharing the
experience
Source: Charlène Brunet, inspired from ARNOULD et al., Consumers, 2002
As a consequence, when a company wants to develop a business strategy
oriented at experiential marketing, it is important to take care of all the steps of an
experiential product's consumption: before purchase, during purchase, during
consumption, after consumption.
2.2.4 Polysensory in the core consumption’s experience
2.2.4.1 The power of stimuli in the consumption’s experience
One important characteristic of experiential marketing is the stimulation of
senses. In order to stimulate the senses, the organisation sends sensorial messages
called stimuli to the customer.
Stimuli are described as events created to favour excitation and the
stimulation of sensory organs; this in order to provoke a feedback from the consumer
after his reaction, first being only a physiological reaction. Stimuli can be:
-
signs
-
sounds
30
-
smells
-
textures
-
tastes
Stimuli capture the attention, charm, seduce and make curious. As a result, the
consumer will show an interest to know more about the product or service. Stimuli
provoke emotional states and end with behaviours.
2.2.4.2 The importance of stimuli to get closer to the consumer
To make at ease the consumer and to create a social interaction with him, it is
important to understand the social distances that we can develop between each
other. According to Edward T. HALL (1963), the social interactions with others
develop around four distances:
-
the private distance
-
the personal distance
-
the social distance
-
the public distance
In 1966, Hall transposed his theory about proxemics to consumption’s
experience. It is interesting to look more closely at this theory the proximity between
the consumer and the product or service. According to HALL, sensations caused by
stimuli allow a sensory progress in order to covet the consumer and influence his
behaviour. In this way, the senses used with distance are vision and hearing while
smell is half way between distance and proximity; finally, touch and taste are situated
in the proximity and privacy area. The following figure illustrates HALL’s theory.
31
Fig.7 Sensory progress and theory of proxemics
Proximity
Privacy
Distance
touch
Separation
smell
hearing
vision
taste
PASSION
Private and
personal
spheres
REASON
Public and
social
spheres
Source : Charlène BRUNET, Le marketing expérientiel ou comment promouvoir une
destination à forte symbolique imaginaire – cas du tourisme de l’effroi en Ecosse, 2014,
inspired from HALL (1966)
Stimulating the five senses is a way to capture the consumer’s attention and
guide him towards the product or service. In this way, the physiological process
allows the reduction of psychological distances (HETZEL Patrick, 2002).
2.2.5 Emotions are essential in experiential marketing
An emotion is an affective, subjective, experiential, instant, multidimensional,
and often uncontrolled phenomena, caused by external factors coming from the
environment (GRAILLOT Laurence, 1998).
32
According to Laurence Graillot (1998), emotions during the experiential’s
consumption come during three stages:
a) Before the consumption’s experience: stimuli influence the consumer.
b) During the consumption’s experience: emotional reactions as regards the
experience.
c) After the consumption’s experience: emotions and feelings are decisive for the
consumer’s satisfaction.
Emotions are, consequently, present in every stage of the consumption’s experience.
Emotions’ typologies are numerous but we can quote the theory of emotions from
Caroll Izard (1972). According to him, there exist ten primary emotions:
-
fear
-
anger
-
contempt
-
distaste
-
sadness
-
guilt
-
interest
-
joy
-
shame
-
surprise
These primary emotions can be combined to secondary emotions to create new
ones. Emotions are numerous but also universal and some of them are considered as
essential, basic and fundamental. As a consequence, experiential marketing can use
this array of emotions to make the consumption’s experiences more lively, dynamic
and unforgettable for the customer.
33
2.3. How to combine innovation and experiential marketing in a
quality tourism product?
Now we need to wonder how we can combine innovation and experiential and
how innovation can favour experiential in a tourism product. How can we coordinate
innovation and experiential marketing?
In this case, it is possible to be in front of a demand of unusual products but also
of consumption experiences which is not the same. How can we combine the
respective forces and assets of innovation and experiential marketing?
2.3.1 Innovation combined to an experience
We can offer an experience with a new, innovative and unusual direction. A
new experience with a new type of product that provides this new approach becomes
a new experience altogether. The innovative product needs to be focused on the
customer’s consumption experience and not on its innovative attributes. Its
innovative attributes will allow it to provide an innovative experience and it is
precisely this experience that needs to be the purpose of the consumption.
Innovation can improve and develop new functions of a product but it can also
provide a new experience thanks to a new combination of a product’s characteristics
and content. To favour the best experience possible, it is also advised to test the
innovative product and try to measure and observe the experience provided to the
customer in order to see if it is the right experience that we want to offer and if the
latter is effective, strong and coherent with the product.
To offer an experience through an innovative product, it is also essential to
understand well the founding principles of experiential marketing and our current
and potential customers’ expectations in terms of consumption’s experience.
34
2.3.2 Innovation combined to emotions and polysensory
Innovation combined to experiential marketing will provide a new and
unusual experience to the consumers. This new experience will stimulate consumers’
senses and emotions. In order to follow the innovation’s angle of the consumption, it
is possible to stimulate, through experiential marketing, senses and emotions that are
not used to be stimulated in tourism.
As regards emotions, we can quote the case of fear emotions in spooky tourism
or thrilling activities. People are constantly seeking fear emotions. This is something
that will be studied in more details in the next chapter. Fear is not a common emotion
in tourism products so it can be innovative as well as experiential to stimulate fear in
a tourism experience.
As for the senses, in experiential marketing, as we have noticed previously, it is
usual to stimulate the five senses (touch, smell, vision, taste, and hearing). If a
company wants to combine experiential marketing and innovation, why not stimulate
new senses? In ghost tourism, for example, we offer the possibility to the public to
stimulate the sixth sense. The sixth sense is defined by: “a subtle perception ability to
perceive the subtle-dimension or the unseen world”12. As an example, the sixth sense
can be stimulated in ghost tourism in the perception of ghosts and spirits.
2.3.3 Innovation and experiential marketing: a successful interrelation
On one hand, innovation can satisfy the demand of new and unusual products
to avoid standard products. On the other hand, experiential marketing can satisfy the
demand of experience and polysensory. Marketing experiential, through the
experience, can provide to the consumer an intense experience that he will remember
for a long time. The consumer will remember the experience beforehand but also the
innovation universe attached to the product that allowed him to live the experience.
The combination of innovation and experiential marketing is interesting for
the consumers because, at the same time, there is the provision of an innovative
product with an unusual experience inside. The combination of these two concepts
12
Definition
from
the
Spiritual
Science
Research
<http://www.spiritualresearchfoundation.org/spiritual-research >
35
Foundation.
Available
on:
can also be useful for the company. Indeed, it can improve its notoriety and its image.
We can say that there is a kind of repercussion from the products’ success to the
company’s image.
In this dissertation we will focus on a marketing strategy based on innovation
with the wish to add some experiential marketing in the products that the company
offers. We will study the case of the ghost tour, an innovative product that can be
exploited to develop experiential marketing.
Nowadays, innovation and the experiential are important stakes in the tourism
industry to effectively respond to competitors. Innovation and experiential
marketing can add value to a tourism product and consequently to a company.
Both can be used and developed separately. However, what is interesting is to
combine them to add more value in the products offered by a company.
The company, Colour My Travel, among its products, offers a ghost tour. A ghost
tour can be an innovative product and can be a base to work on from an
experiential marketing’s angle.
Chapter 3. The ghost tour: a key product in a niche
and innovative market
Introduction
Ghost tourism is a niche market and an innovative and unusual form of tourism that
offers innovative products. Among the products that are part of ghost tourism, we
find the ghost tour. The ghost tour is now present in several big cities around the
world so it is important to cultivate its unusual and distinctive content and form to
keep it innovative. A ghost tour can be a business development opportunity for a
36
company if we know how to build it and how to manage it. In our case, Malta can be a
good destination to develop a ghost tour because it benefits from assets to base on for
ghost tourism.
3.1. Ghost tourism: a niche market more and more popular
3.1.1 Ghost tourism: attached to dark tourism and spooky tourism
3.1.1.1 Dark tourism: a form of tourism focused on death and pain
We can say that ghost tourism is a subpart of dark tourism and spooky tourism.
Dark tourism or thanatourism is a large form of tourism that is defined by visiting and
experiencing sites and places associated with death, dying, and disaster (FOLEY and
LENNON, 1996). The most famous places to visit in dark tourism are concentration
camps, war cemeteries, celebrities' graves, memorials, sites where a nuclear, natural,
or human disaster has occurred. The tourists’ motivations in visiting these kind of
places can be a pleasure of macabre, a duty of remembrance or a philosophical
practice of their own mortality (LENNON John and FOLEY Malcolm, 2000). In 1996,
A.V. SEATON (From Thanatopsis to Thanatourism: Guided by the Dark) argues that the
thanatourist is “motivated by the desire for actual or symbolic encounters with death.”
Dark tourism covers various practices (SEATON, 1996):
-
Visiting places to watch death (e.g. public hangings or executions)
-
Visiting sites after death or pain has occurred (Auschwitz, New Orleans and
Katrina hurricane)
-
Visiting memorials (cemeteries and monuments)
-
Visiting re-enactments of tragic events
-
Visiting museums dedicated to death or to tragic events (e.g. museum of
Chernobyl)
As a result, dark tourism can be practised in different places but all these places
must have a link with death, pain, or disaster.
37
3.1.1.2 Spooky tourism as a branch of dark tourism
In dark tourism, we can see a subpart and a smaller form of tourism that we
can call spooky tourism or scary tourism. This second form of tourism is a part of
dark tourism because it is still focused on death and the macabre, however, spooky
tourism can be held in places where no tragedies have occurred and it is often mixed
with entertainment. In this way, spooky tourism seems to stand out from dark
tourism since it provides fear emotions and surprise without necessarily being based
on a previous disaster in the respective locality/place (BRUNET Charlène, 2014).
In 2014, I tried to define what spooky tourism is in my dissertation Le
marketing expérientiel ou comment promouvoir une destination à forte symbolique
imaginaire – cas du tourisme de l’effroi en Ecosse (2014). In this way, spooky tourism
can be defined as a tourism activity that provides fear emotions more or less
important to a person. We need to precise that this fear emotion is desired by the
person beforehand and it is one of the main motivations of practicing spooky tourism.
Therefore, tourists expect to be frightened during the consumption of their spooky
tourism product (BRUNET Charlène, 2014).
Spooky tourism mainly concerns (BRUNET Charlène, 2014):
-
Ghost walks and tours
-
Ghosts hunts and investigations
-
Haunted or scary accommodations
-
Museums focused on death and the macabre
-
Entertaining haunted homes
As regards the haunted homes, we can quote the very popular case of the McKamey
Manor located in San Diego, United States of America. This complex offers an
interactive and terrifying journey13; the client is kidnapped and lives a real horror
movie during a couple of hours in the hands of horrific actors.
We can notice that in spooky tourism, we find an important sphere about the
supernatural and ghosts; this brings us to ghost tourism, which is focused on
spectrality14.
McKamey Manor, Official website, http://www.mckameymanor.com/
Refers to ghosts. Along with ghosts come phantoms, phantasms, spooks, poltergeists, apparitions,
and, less commonly, revenants (WOLFREYS Julian, Spectrality, 2013)
13
14
38
In order to understand better the place of ghost tourism in the tourism market, below
is a figure that shows the three forms of tourism explained above.
Fig.8 The place of ghost tourism in tourism market
Refers to death, the macabre and pain.
Visiting places of natural, nuclear or
Dark tourism
human disasters.
Visiting museums that deal with
disasters, death or the macabre.
Comparing to
dark tourism,
there is the addition of fear
Spooky tourism
emotions
tourists.
expected
The
by
the
entertainment
aspect is also very important.
Ghost tourism
Focused on ghosts and
spectrality only.
Source: Charlène BRUNET
In this way, spooky tourism and ghost tourism are part of dark tourism but they have
their own specifications.
39
3.1.2 Ghost tourism as a niche market
Ghost tourism is a form of tourism based on ghosts and the paranormal. It
especially deals with the wish and the desire to encounter ghosts, the interest and
curiosity of the paranormal and the visits of places and sites attached to the spirit
world such as cemeteries, haunted houses, castles, and historic towns (RODRIGUEZ
GARCIA Beatriz, 2012).
Ghost tourism is not recent but it has been democratised and has become
trendy recently. In this way, we know that in the 18th century, English tourists used to
visit Scotland to find something spiritual, mystical, and mysterious that they did not
have in their country (INGLIS David and HOLMES Mary, 2003).
In order for it to develop, ghost tourism requires a specific environment,
favourable to fear. As a result, ghost tourism is based on the local history. Struggles,
fights, revolts, wars, famous characters, epidemics, or crimes fuel the tourism
product’s content. The tangible heritage is also important: religious monuments,
bridges and castles are the symbols of a rich history. The intangible heritage is
essential in ghost tourism: legends, tales, myths, and the part they play in what is
unknown and mysterious arouse curiosity and excitation. Nature, climate, and
landscapes are also favourable to ghost tourism and fear emotion mostly due to the
play of lights, mist or rain (BRUNET Charlène, 2014).
All these areas: history, heritage and nature, contribute to ghost tourism and
are essential for the tourists' imagination when they consume the tourism product.
They give more relief and sense to this form of tourism that is not only interactive and
entertaining, but also educative. As a consequence, ghost tourism, apart from fear
emotion and entertainment, allows to provide knowledge and information about a
specific area. It is an unusual way to visit a place and an alternative to a standard
tourism product (BRUNET Charlène, 2014).
3.1.3 The offer in ghost tourism
In ghost tourism, we find several products and activities attached to the
paranormal and ghosts. We can say that ghost tourism covers:
40
a) Ghost walks and tours
We will focus on the ghost tour in the next subpart of the dissertation.
b) Ghost hunts and investigations
Ghost hunts are research held in places alleged to be haunted. The aim of a ghost hunt
is to collect evidence and explanations of paranormal phenomena. More and more
ghost hunt teams are created around the world. In Malta, we have also some ghost
hunt teams as Ghost Squad Malta.
c) Haunted accommodations
Tourists can choose to sleep in a haunted hotel during their holidays. Hauntedrooms,
created in 2009, is a specialized travel company that lists a range of haunted hotels in
the United Kingdom and in the United States of America. The aim of these travel
companies is to answer a more important demand of both luxury and the paranormal.
d) Events linked with ghosts
We can think of Halloween celebrations around the world, especially in the United
States of America or in Mexico (Día de las Brujas).
Ghost tourism is a “lighter” aspect of dark tourism because it adds some
entertainment in the spectrality field as a key orientation; this is especially the case
for the ghost tours.
Fig.9 Ghost tourism’s representation
Source : http ://www.flickr.com/photos/patlat/6147657096/
41
Through this picture, we understand the enthusiasm of tourists to approach the
paranormal’s sphere and the ghosts. This can be a representation of ghost tourism
here: go to the encounter of ghosts and spectrality. The ghost is used to tourism aims
in this case.
3.2. The Ghost Tour product
3.2.1 What is a ghost tour?
The ghost tour, or ghost walk, consists in a guided tour focused on the
paranormal, ghost stories, legends and tumultuous history of the locality/the place
where it is held. The ghost tour is a “guided walking route, in which ghost or esoteric
stories are told while stopping at important landmarks” (THOMPSON, 2010).
The ghost tour needs to be entertaining for the audience; in this way, it is
common that the guide exaggerates his attitude to bring some fear and experience to
the audience. The ghost tour is mainly held in city centres but it can also bring people
to cemeteries, underground passages, castles, or old buildings in general. Usually, a
ghost tour is a historical tour but with a scary touch/background. It is often about
massacres, wars, torture, ghost stories, legends, dramatic, famous characters, events,
etc.
The ghost tour is not usually the main attraction in a city (except maybe cities
such Gettysburg in the United States of America). As a result, it is important to
develop the market in, and to increase the fame of the destination.
3.2.2 The performance of the guide is essential
The entertainment during a ghost tour is provided by the guide’s performance.
The guide needs to capture the audience’s attention, provide shivers and add a bit of
“drama” during his performance. In this way, not only the narrative is essential for a
ghost tour guide, but also the attitude and the performance are unavoidable. The
guide needs to narrate and be a good story-teller but also needs to add fear in his
stories (BRUNET Charlène, 2014). The performative achievement of legend-telling is
possible through style, content, and pacing (HOLLOWAY Julian, 2009).
42
It is common that the guide wears a costume and a hat, or holds a walking
stick. The guide needs to build an atmosphere around his stories. The stories are the
content of the visit; they need to be scary beforehand, and the environment and the
style are determining factors for a good consumer’s experience.
The ghost tour needs to bring not only entertainment, but also education with
information about the place and local history. In this way, the guide needs to have a
good knowledge of history and of the place, and he needs to be a good actor to
provide emotions to the audience. Sometimes, to add some entertainment, fun and
humor can be used.
3.2.3 The demand from the tourists: paranormal, entertainment and
education
Visitors who attend a ghost tour usually expect to be scared and the
anticipation of this feeling strengthen their imagination before and during the tour.
Among the visitors, we can find (RODRIGUEZ GARCIA Beatriz, 2012):
-
The “curious” of the paranormal and occult
-
The “bored” who come here by chance
-
The “passionate” who are really interested in paranormal
These three categories of people are generally here to ask question about the
paranormal. It is not the guide who needs to say if ghosts exist or not, but it is he who
makes people wonder about it.
Some tourists join a ghost tour because they wish to encounter a ghost, but almost
all tourists expect to be entertained first of all (THOMPSON Robert C., 2008). In this
way, still according to Robert C. THOMPSON, the best ghost tour is the one which
makes ghosts a potential truth; “ghost tours do not promise ghosts, they perform them”
(THOMPSON Robert C., Entertaining ghosts: Gettysburg ghost tours and the
performance of belief, p. 8, 2008).
In the next subpart, we will explain why a ghost tour can be a good business
development opportunity for a tourism company.
43
3.3. The ghost tour as a business development opportunity for a
tourism company
3.3.1 People are attracted by mysteries and unknown things
Nowadays, people are getting more and more bored of everyday life and
routine; they want to escape from it. They want something unusual, extraordinary to
live, at least for a moment. The ghost universe is an unknown world full of mysteries
and also a world close to us because it is related to the basic life process and death.
Ghosts fascinate people because they generate an important imagination, alimented
by movies, literature, and representations that we have of them. What is unknown
and mysterious always scares and fascinates at the same time: we want to approach it
but it is still a bit apprehensive. This is something which fuels the curiosity and the
interest (BRUNET Charlène, 2014).
A good number of people take the paranormal and ghosts seriously. A Harris
poll held in 2013 shows that 42% of Americans believe in ghosts15. In Great Britain, a
YouGov poll held in 2014 shows that 34% of British believe in ghosts16. As a result,
we can say that the paranormal attracts more and more people: curious ones but also
passionate ones. The numerous TV shows about ghost hunts allow also to popularise
the paranormal directly in people’s homes. In Malta, two TV shows are really popular:
Oskur and Rajt ma rajtx.
Ghost tourism is a means to approach a mystical, spiritual and paranormal
universe. This allows people to escape from human reality to project into an
extraordinary universe. We even talk about an escape from reality (“escapism”) to
enter in a fiction or in another reality, still unknown.
As regards the ghost tour, tourists take part in an experience of fear and
entertainment at the same time. The fear of the spectre desired by the tourist has
been transformed in “fun”. The ghost tour offers a form of scary pleasure (KELLER
Kristine, 2010).
15
Harris, Americans' Belief in God, Miracles and Heaven Declines, Available on:
<http://www.harrisinteractive.com/NewsRoom/HarrisPolls/> (Consulted on 25-06-2015).
16
YouGov
UK,
‘Ghosts
exist’,
say
1
in
3
Brits,
Available
on:
<https://yougov.co.uk/news/2014/10/31/ghosts-exist-say-1-3-brits/> (Consulted on 25-06-2015).
44
3.3.2 People in the quest of fear emotion
Fear emotion can be a “kind of booster injection”17 in order to feel more alive
when everyday life is too boring. Fear is often attached to death or its evocation. In
this way, people feel more alive when they border on death.
It is possible to be on the quest for fear when we know that the situation is safe
and under control. Tourists practise an activity that will provide them fear but they
know that they do not risk anything. The professor Edward Slavishak (University of
Susquehanna, Pennsylvania) argues about scary tourism: “It’s [scary tourism] a safe
form of danger. Visitors experience a mild sense of danger and spookiness".
This concept of risk is studied in the sociology of risk. We talk about “stress
seeking” (KLAUSNER, 1968). “Stress seeking” is the quest for stress in a chosen
situation. This stress is positive because it is totally desired. This stress allows for an
experience to be at its peak due to the strong emotions that are being felt. The
adrenaline is, therefore, a form of elation and blossoming (LE BRETON David, 2012).
Below is a figure that gets back to the main ideas regarding the reasons of the
quest for fear:
Fig.10 Why are people looking for fear?
Escape from
the routine
and its safety
Elation,
intensity of
being
Feeling more
alive
Quest
for fear
Source : Charlène Brunet, Le marketing expérientiel ou comment promouvoir une
destination à forte symbolique imaginaire – cas du tourisme de l’effroi en Ecosse, 2014
17Psychologie.com,
Pourquoi aimons-nous avoir peur ?, July 2009 [online]. Available on :
<http://www.psychologies.com/Moi/Se-connaitre/Emotions/Reponses-d-expert/Pourquoi-aimonsnous-avoir-peur>. (Consulté le 02-12-2013).
45
Ghost tourism can be a means to satisfy people’s fear needs that are missing in
their safe and everyday life.
3.3.3 The ghost tour: a product more and more popularised; how to add
value to it and keep it as an innovative product?
The ghost tour is maybe the most famous and consumed product in ghost
tourism. The ghost tour has been now popularised in several big cities or capital cities
around the world so there might be the problem that it might become a common
product in a near future. In this way, it is important to save the innovative character
of the ghost tour and find ways to keep adding value to this product despite its
important popularisation.
We can make a ghost tour just to make a ghost tour but ghost tours become
more current nowadays so we need to offer more than just a product named “ghost
tour” to stand out from competitiveness. A solution would be to add more
experiential elements into the ghost tour in order to make it more innovative. In this
way, it is the experience that will add value and bring more innovation in the product.
In order to add more experiential levers in the ghost tour, we can use the
experiential wheel from Patrick HETZEL and transpose it into ghost tourism.
46
Fig.11 Experiential marketing wheel and ghost tourism
Using the brand to support
experiential
Surprising
Strenghten the company's image
and fame thanks to an
unforgettable experience. An
unusual product is better to
remember and can help a
company to be famous through
key experiential products.
Escape from the routine.
Unexpected experiences. We
do not know what will happen
exactly.
Creating social links
Offering the extraordinary
Direct participation from the
clients, a role to play. Favour
interactivity.
An unknown world, spiritual and
fascinating where imagination
has an important place.
Stimulating the five senses
Noises, vision, touch, shivers.
Source : Charlène Brunet, Le marketing expérientiel ou comment promouvoir une
destination à forte symbolique imaginaire – cas du tourisme de l’effroi en Ecosse
(slightly changed to adapt to a company and not to a destination anymore) 2014
In this way, we need to strengthen the experience side of the ghost tour and
work on the paranormal universe and the unusual feelings and senses that are
stimulated during this kind of tour.
3.3.4 Malta’s assets for ghost tourism
Some places around the world are famous thanks to ghost tourism and ghost
tours. It is the case of Gettysburg in the United States of America, or also Edinburgh in
Scotland for example. In this way, ghost tourism can be a very important part of
tourism offers in some destinations.
47
In order for a destination, to develop ghost tourism, it needs to have certain
assets to base on (see part 3.1.2 Ghost tourism as a niche market) such as history or
heritage. As regards Malta, the country has a rich history and past. The Knights'
period in Malta allows for some urban legends and famous atypical characters to
focus on during a ghost tour, such as Jean-François de St. Clement, a French Knight
who was strangled and thrown into the sea after escaping and hiding from the Turks.
His behaviour caused the death of hundreds of Maltese people.
The country is very religious and a lot of people believe in ghosts. Malta has
numerous ghost stories often referring to the white lady. This white lady committed
suicide the day of her wedding by jumping off a balcony because she did not like her
future husband. She is called “white lady” because she wore a wedding dress the day
of her death.
As regards architecture, Malta has some old buildings as well as abandoned
houses, especially in Bormla, and in the Three Cities18 that can strengthen the
imagination of ghosts.
Innovation can be a base to develop experiential marketing. The ghost tour is an
innovative product that can provide an experience to customers. Therefore, it is
interesting to work on this product and try to integrate more experiential
marketing in it. Colour My Travel, a young excursion operator, wants to orientate
towards innovation in its products and increase their development. A good
opportunity for this company would be to go towards a more experiential focus,
improve and strengthen the current offer as well as create new types of
experiences for customers.
18 The Three Cities refer to Vittoriosa, Senglea and Cospicua. They were named like this by Napoléon
Bonaparte.
48
CONCLUSION PART I
Through this first part of the dissertation, we noticed that the tourism products are
not only numerous and various in a tourism destination but they also form a whole
macro-product. Among these products, the guided tour appears as a key product for
the cultural area of a destination. The cultural area is important for Malta, therefore, it
is crucial to provide a good quality of tours.
Innovation and experiential marketing can be good concepts to work on in order to
increase quality and success in tourism products. Combined, both offer more value to
the offer and to the customers. In ghost tourism, a niche market of dark tourism,
people can experience the paranormal and unusual feelings and emotions that are not
normally exploited in tourism. The ghost tour, for example, is an innovative product
that can be improved through an experiential way.
Colour My Travel is focused on innovative guided tours; as a result, it is interested in
building a marketing strategy based on innovation with an orientation to experiential
marketing.
At this time, we need to think of research problems that can be:
-
How can innovation and experiential marketing affect attractiveness, success,
and quality of an excursion tour operator?
-
How can we develop a quality business offer which is attractive and
successful using innovation and experiential marketing?
The hypotheses to answer these research problems can be the following:
-
Innovation adds value to experiential marketing
-
The combination of innovation and experiential marketing attracts more
customers than traditional offers
-
The combination of innovation and experiential marketing generates more
value for a business
-
The combination of innovation and experiential marketing allows a business
to focus on quality rather than quantity
49
The next part will be dedicated to Colour My Travel and to its marketing strategy. We
will look at the previous hypotheses to come up with a marketing strategy suitable for
the kind of company that Colour My Travel is with its own issues and business
orientations.
50
PART II: COLOUR MY TRAVEL, A
STRATEGY
FOCUSED
ON
INNOVATION AND ORIENTATED
TOWARDS
EXPERIENTIAL
MARKETING
51
INTRODUCTION PART II
Colour My Travel is an interesting case study for the topic of this dissertation. Indeed,
this company is focused on innovation and, as it is very young, it still is in
development and growing. The company wants to have a marketing strategy suitable
to its business development objectives and ambitions. The company did not yet have
a proper marketing strategy hence the importance to make a proposal of a marketing
strategy to base on. Part II of this dissertation will introduce the company, make an
assessment of the current situation, and make a proposal of a marketing strategy
adapted to a young company focused on innovation with the wish to extend its
activity and add more experiential marketing in its offer.
Chapter 1. Mission at Colour My Travel
Introduction
Colour My Travel is based on innovation and offers themed and unusual tours. As a
start-up, it is important to develop more innovative products and start exploring
experiential marketing to give more experience to the tourists. Therefore, the mission
within Colour My Travel is to build a marketing strategy attached to innovation and
orientated at experiential marketing.
1.1 Colour my travel: a young excursion operator
1.1.1 Presentation of the company
Colour My Travel is an organised excursion operator licensed by the MTA
(Malta Tourism Authority). The company was created in September 2013 and it is
still in development. Colour My Travel is focused on quality instead of quantity and
volume. In this way, it is important to use a strategy based on differentiation and
52
offering different kind of unusual walking tours. The services offered are different
and innovative compared to the other companies.
Colour My Travel is currently composed of 10 employees:
-
1 Managing Director
-
1 Operations manager
-
1 Financial Director
-
6 Guides
-
1 Marketing intern
Nowadays, people are used to build their own holidays with a guide, a map,
internet and books, for example. They are used to exploring a tourist area by
themselves. As a result, we need to offer something the tourists cannot make
themselves. In this way, Colour My Travel creates unusual tours with their specific
content, and it is not easy for the tourists to find themselves the different information
and stories delivered during these tours.
1.1.2 Internal audit of Colour My Travel
In order to build a suitable marketing strategy for a company, it is essential to
know its current situation. For this, an internal audit allows to highlight the strong
points and the weak points of the company. In this way, we can persist on the strong
points and develop them and, on the other side, act on the weak points to avoid them
or minimise them in the future to make them disappear afterwards.
An internal audit of Colour My Travel is illustrated through the next chart:
53
Fig.12 Internal audit of Colour My Travel
STRONG POINTS
WEAK POINTS
Experienced and licensed guides
Tours available only in English: reduced
accessibility to all the tourists
Avoiding standard tours: innovation
Tours mainly focused on Valletta
A business in development: not afraid of Standard tours do not include the interior
trying new things; still in progress and
of places/monuments
evolving
Diversified tours + free tour: an attractive Colour My Travel does not have an office to
offer
receive/meet the customers or potential
customers
A dynamic, complementary and young
working team
Always a good audience during the tours:
there is a good number of attendants in
every tour
Source: Charlène Brunet
After observing the internal audit of the company, some stakes and priorities emerge:
 Strengthening the promotion of tours
This should include diversified communication supports and materials as well as
better distribution channels.
 Adding new tours
Enlarge the offer in adding new regular tours or also punctual ones upon request.
 Extending the activity outside Valletta
Malta is a great destination for tourism so why not offer tours outside the Capital
city? This can be in other cities, in the countryside, in villages, etc.
54
 Focusing and making efforts on paid tours for a better money value for the
company
The free tour is very popular but the paid tours (Sins in the City and Ghost tour, as
well as the future ones) need to be as popular as the free tour because they are a
source of money value for the company.
 Thinking of other languages than English to enlarge the potential customers
Even if English is seen as an international language, it is important to not forget that
some people do not speak it or have a lot of difficulties with this language. These
kinds of people also travel and they want to attend walking tours like the others.
Other languages as Spanish or French (we do not mention Asian languages here
because Colour My Travel is not focused on the Asian market which is far away) are
quite spoken around the world so why not integrate them in the offer?
1.1.3 Objectives
According to the previous internal audit, and the key orientations, the objectives of
Colour My Travel could be the following:
1.1.3.1 Qualitative objectives
Colour My Travel is focused on quality so it should work very hard on the following
qualitative objectives:
a) Keep focusing on quality tours and improve the current offer through an
experiential marketing’s angle
b) Have a better distribution: improve the booking system; have other
distribution channels
c) Keep the innovation orientation and add more experiential marketing
d) Have a better knowledge of the customers: lead regular interviews and
satisfaction questionnaires; have a customer intelligence and collect
information from the Malta Tourism Authority (MTA) about the tourists
visiting Malta, the current consumption trends in tourism, etc.
55
1.1.3.2 Quantitative objectives
Even if the company is focused on quality, the quantity is still important for every
company. Indeed, it is important to gain more money to make evolve and grow the
business. The following objectives need to be taken into consideration:
-
Gain more money value
-
Have more tours
-
Have more volume
1.2 Global offer
1.2.1 Regular tours
1.2.1.1 Valletta Free Tour
The Valletta Free tour is a 90-minutes tour in the Capital city. It gives tourists
the opportunity to visit the main landmarks of the city but it does not include the
entrance into monuments or places. This means that the tour is always outside. It is a
tour based on donations that is to say if people are satisfied they can give a donation
at the end of the tour to the guide. This system maximises the customers’ satisfaction
(it is up to them to give a donation) and the guide’s quality performance (he must
deliver a good performance to be able to collect donations). Another company also
offers a free tour of the Capital and I attended a tour from them as a mystery client,
which will be approached further in this part of the dissertation.
1.2.1.2 Sins in the City
The Sins in The City tour is an evening tour of 2 hours in Valletta; its cost is
15€. This tour is about stories attached to sins that took place in the past and linked
to great figures of the Malta history such as, for example, Pinto De Fonseca, Jean De La
Vallette, Romegas, La Cassière, etc. This tour is focused on entertainment but also
deals with true and historical events and stories. A complimentary drink is offered at
the end of the tour in a café where all the attendants can socialize among themselves
and also with the staff.
56
1.2.1.3 Valletta Ghost Tour
The Valletta Ghost Tour is an evening tour of 2 hours and its cost is 15€ like
the Sins in The City tour. During this tour, the guide delivers ghost stories about
Valletta. Some of these stories are more or less recent but the majority of them date
back to the Knights’ period. The tour is focused on storytelling and could be improved
– this would be the topic of Part III of this dissertation. A complimentary drink is also
offered at the end of the tour.
1.2.2 Occasional tours upon request
Beyond the regular tours, the company suits and adapts to specific needs,
interests and types of people (students, incentive group, etc.). Thus, the guides can,
for instance, carry out the following tours:
-
Complete Valletta Tour
-
Mdina Tour
-
Vittoriosa Tour
-
Private Tours with special interest such as a tour about World War II
The next figure illustrates the current offer of Colour My Travel.
Fig.13 Current offer of Colour My Travel
Free tour; key
product
Paid and themed
tours
Private and
customised tours
Valletta
free tour
Sins in The
City
Special
interest
1-day tour
Source: Charlène BRUNET
57
Valletta
Ghost Tour
Private
group
The company has a diversified offer that can suit to:
a) Specific needs
The themed tours are ideal to avoid standard tours and to approach a specific topic
such as the paranormal universe and ghosts for example.
b) Several budgets and financial means
The free tour is a good tour to attract people with a small budget such as students.
c) Time and tourists’ availability
The shortest tour is 1 hour 30 minutes and the themed tours are 2 hours long.
However, customers can have a private full day tour, for example.
1.3 Mission at Colour My Travel
1.3.1 The main mission
The main mission within Colour My Travel is the business development of
tours. In other words, it is required to work on a marketing and product development
strategy. With regards to the marketing side, the company does not yet have a proper
document presenting its marketing strategy on which it can base for the present and
the future. The aim is to build and create this marketing strategy and adapt it to the
company, its stakes and objectives. The product development area is important in this
marketing strategy. Indeed, it is essential to improve the current products that the
company already offers, strengthen them in an experiential way, as well as create
new ones. Therefore, the marketing needs to focus on a strategy based on innovation
and one that is attached to the quality of tours. The experiential marketing will be
added little by little in this strategy in order to increase the experiences provided by
the tours in a near future.
To sum up, two important documents were elaborated during the internship:
-
A professional document with a proposal of a marketing strategy passed on to
Colour My Travel’s director
-
The present dissertation
Both are in English and will be used by the company.
58
1.3.2 Focus on the ghost tour
In this marketing strategy, emphasis is placed on the ghost tour product.
Through my specialization in spooky and ghost tourism, it is more relevant to work
more specifically on a product I have knowledge and experience about. The ghost
tour will be a case study for an improvement of a tour attached to experiential
marketing. This case will be used as a template for the company to improve the other
tours. This part includes a lot of ideas, methodologies and figures in order to make
this tour’s improvement operational as soon as possible.
1.3.3 Stakes and benefits for the company
Since the company is a start-up and has been in existence for one year and a
half now, it is important to keep developing the products. In that case, the creation of
new products is essential to scale up the global offer of the company. It is important
to create new products, attract new targets, improve and diversify the global offer.
Furthermore, adding an experiential marketing side in the marketing strategy
could allow the company to be more innovative next to the competitors that still offer
standard tours.
1.3.4 Future and perspectives
In view of the internship’s duration, recommendations, orientations and
perspectives are really important for both the short and the long run for Colour My
Travel. In this way, following up on the marketing strategy and the dissertation, it is
crucial to give to the company the key orientations to keep the development growing
and increasing in the future.
As regards the future and the new opportunities and perspectives, the case of
the opening of a new branch dedicated to dark tourism will be studied.
59
1.3.5 The other tasks
Besides the main mission, the proposal of a marketing strategy and the
improvement of tours, I was in charge of other tasks. These include the following
ones:
a) Presence during the tours
I had to be present during all the tours in order to supervise their quality as well as
help the guide in the logistics of the tours. It is essential to be out in the field to
understand the reality of the business before doing anything. It does not make sense
to create a marketing strategy if we do not understand how the business works in
reality.
b) Guides’ experience
As a lecturer-guide, it was very important for me to help the guides and give them
advice. In this way, I participated in the guides’ trials and trainings before the launch
of a tour. The guides need to be sufficiently prepared to start a new tour, hence, it is
important to ensure the quality of the guide’s performance and tour’s content.
c) Booking service and customer care
I was also in charge of taking bookings for the Valletta free tour and answer requests
from our customers on social media and by email.
d) Promotion of the company and tours
It was essential to promote the company and the tours on social media and also face
to face. Consequently, I created the tours’ events on social media, tried to promote
them, and posted photos I took myself during the tours. Furthermore, I handed out
some brochures and calendars of tours directly to hotels, tourist offices and English
schools in Malta.
The next figure illustrates the main missions and the different tasks undertaken
during the internship within Colour My Travel:
60
Fig.14 The different missions and tasks at Colour My Travel
Marketing strategy
MAIN MISSIONS
Dissertation
English
Improvement
Ghost tour case
of
study
tours
-------------
Bookings and
customer care
Other daily tasks
Guides’
training
Promotion
Tours’
quality
Tours’
logistics
Source: Charlène BRUNET
61
in
Colour My Travel needed a marketing strategy suitable for its image, philosophy,
ambitions and objectives. The main mission was to create this marketing
strategy and focus on the ghost tour product so as to have a template for the
future development of tours. Some perspectives and orientations follow this
marketing strategy based on innovation with an experiential marketing’s angle.
Chapter 2. Marketing strategy of Colour My Travel
and methodology
Introduction
In order to be more competitive in the tourism market, it is essential to have a proper
marketing strategy suitable for, and adapted to, Colour My Travel. During 20 weeks, I
worked within Colour My Travel and I created a proposal of a marketing strategy. The
following part introduces the methodology of the creation of this marketing strategy
and highlights its key orientations.
2.1 Market knowledge
When we want to create a marketing strategy, the first step is always to know the
company (see the previous chapter), the destination (see part I chapter 1) and the
market.
62
2.1.1 In which market is Colour My Travel situated?
Colour My Travel is present on the tourism market in Malta and more
precisely in the cultural area. The area where Colour My Travel is focused on is
obviously Heritage which involves:




Archaeology
Museums, Interpretation centres
Intangible heritage
Monuments, itineraries, routes and guided tours
A market research on the ground has also been completed during the
internship. Indeed, I visited the main landmarks of the destination, took photos and
wrote notes. This allowed me to have a view on the global offer of Malta. Besides this,
I met key spooky tourism actors such as an employee of the torture museum in Mdina
and the members of a ghost hunt team (see part III). After this market research, I
created a power point presentation of my feedback of the different visits around
Malta. Just below, we can see the cover page of this power point document:
Fig.15 Cover page of the power point presentation
Source: Charlène BRUNET
63
The objectives of this market research on the ground were to:
-
Experience the tourist’s perception of Malta
-
Discover Malta’s tourist offer
-
Visit places of interest
-
See the strong and the weak points of the tourist offer
The conclusion of this work was that Malta has a range of very diversified tourism
activities that can suit several type of visitors. If we focus on guided tours, I visited
Malta by myself but I also tried the sightseeing bus tour and the little train in Valletta
in order to visit the destination through different ways.
2.1.2 Colour My Travel’s competitors
Focusing on the cultural area and the guided tours market, it was essential to
carry out some competitive intelligence in order to identify and supervise Colour My
Travel’s competitors.
2.1.2.1 Identifying the main competitors
Colour My Travel’s competitors are of course the companies that offer guided
tours through Malta, especially walking tours. However, we can notice some
competitors that are more serious than the others. In this way as it concerns the free
tour, our main competitor is the company X. This company also offers free tours of
Valletta like us and they operate also on Saturday mornings at 10am. The main
differences between their free tours and ours are the following:
-
They offer free tours of Valletta but also of Mdina
-
Three tours of Valletta are held every week (we offer our tour twice a week)
-
The meeting point is different
-
Their itinerary is similar to ours but a few stops are different
The moment when Colour My Travel is the most in competition with the company X is
of course on Saturdays mornings because our 2 tours are held at the same time.
64
Regarding the Sins in the City tour, no one else offers this kind of tour in Malta.
As for the ghost tour, some independent people try to occasionally offer (they are not
regular tours) ghost tours. However, no excursion company as Colour My Travel runs
regular ghost tours.
2.1.2.2 Why and how supervise the competition?
It is important to carry out a competitive intelligence regularly to have the best
possible knowledge of our competitors’ current situation. This allows us to supervise
our competitors and see:
-
The differences between their offer and our offer
-
Their progress and evolution throughout the time
-
Their assets and their weak points
-
Their customers’ satisfaction
A competitive intelligence is essential to be able to respond to competition and
always offer unusual packages to the tourists to stand out from the competitors.
2.1.2.3 How to proceed to carry out a good competitive intelligence?
A method to carry out a good competitive intelligence would be:
Fig.16 Method for a good competitive intelligence
1
Identify the main competitors
2
Know what information we want to collect: focus on specific issues and
data
3
Have relevant sourcing: note all the sources used to collect the
information (date, support, person contacted)
4
Be precise in the collection of the information; avoid excess of information
that can affect the information’s readability and visibility (always focus on
the information we want to have)
5
Use several tools/supports/sources: competitors’ news on social media,
65
competitors’ customers’ feedbacks and opinions, conversations and
meetings, observation as a mystery client, etc.
6
Analyse the information collected, do an assessment
7
Choose orientations and/or correctives for our future marketing strategy
considering the competitive intelligence and the obtained results
Source: Charlène Brunet
Obviously, this kind of competitive intelligence needs to be carried out
regularly because everything evolves quickly in tourism including the competitors’
situation.
2.1.2.4 Mystery client to the competitors
I attended a free tour from our main competitors as a mystery client. It was an
opportunity to see the differences between our two free tours, and highlight the
strong and the weak points of their product. In conclusion, they offer a quality tour
and the guide was very knowledgeable. However, this company X does not have a
good marketing because the guide was not very visible, the meeting is not the most
ideal and only a few people attended this tour when I was there. Therefore, Colour My
Travel needs to be careful of this competitor because they have a good quality offer
and their marketing can still be improved.
A document has been produced and given to Colour My Travel’s director. This
document is an assessment of my mission as a mystery client; it analyses our
competitor’s free tour.
66
2.1.3 Market research’s methodology: summary
The following figure illustrates the methodology chosen for the market research:
Fig.17 Market Research’s methodology
Destination
Company
Market
• VisitMalta statistics and surveys
• Books and literature
• Market research on the ground
• Regular observation during the tours
• Regular meetings with the director
• Internal audit
• Market research on the ground (global offer)
• Meetings with different providers
• Competitive intelligence; mystery client
Source: Charlène BRUNET
The market research allowed us to get to know better the destination, the company
and the market. This is the first step before creating a proper marketing strategy.
2.2 Marketing Strategy’s methodology
2.2.1 Segmentation
The product segmentation is the dividing of the market into distinctive
products with their own and equivalent characteristics. Colour My Travel is in the
cultural segment of the tourism market; more precisely in the guided tours and
walking tours segment.
The following figure illustrates the position of Colour My Travel into the tourism
market:
67
Fig.18 The position of Colour My Travel into the tourism market
Tourism
Market
Cultural area
Itineraries,
routes
Guided and
walking tours
Heritage
Source: Charlène BRUNET
2.2.2 Positioning: innovation in the heart of the production of tours
The positioning is the place the company has in the consumer’s spirit. It is the
image that the company wants to give of its products or services. The company needs
to find a different way of speaking with the customer from the one used by the
competitors. The positioning allows an identification, that is to say it delivers to the
costumer a reference universe (a specific consumption’s universe), a kind of offer and
a specific style. Here, the differentiation has an essential role because it is through the
positioning that the company will work on the competitive advantage it wants to
provide and on the uniqueness of its offer in the market. Before choosing a
positioning, we need to ask some questions:
-
Which targets does the company wants to attract?
-
Against which competitors?
-
When to develop a new positioning?
-
Why?
-
Which characteristics to highlight?
68
The aim is to provide a positive and good image of the company and to enhance it.
With regards to Colour My Travel, its positioning could be innovation, quality and
unusual guided tours.
Just below is an illustration of the positioning of Colour My Travel:
Fig.19 Colour My Travel’s positioning
Quality
tours
Innovative
tours
Unusual
tour's
content
Deliver an
experience
Source: Charlène BRUNET
Colour My Travel aims to offer unusual tours attached to quality and
innovation. This positioning could be interesting for the tourists. Indeed, it highlights
a company’s image: being dynamic, concerned about quality, serious, one that goes
ahead in a constant development and one that has new ideas every time. We know
that tourists avoid more and more standard products and are concerned about
quality when they travel. Hence, Colour My Travel’s positioning could be suitable to
the tourists’ expectations regarding an excursion operator.
2.2.3 Colour My Travel’s targets
After choosing a segmentation and a positioning, the company needs to focus
on specific targets in order to satisfy the potential customers as much as possible.
Indeed, focusing on specific targets would allow it to concentrate its efforts on a
69
reduced audience, have a better knowledge of these groups of people, and build a
suitable offer for them.
In the case of Colour My Travel, the following elements need to be taken into
consideration:
2.2.3.1 General targets

Nationality
Colour My Travel targets as many Maltese people as tourists from abroad.
However, as regards the Free Valletta Tour, tourists are more attracted than Maltese
people. Maltese people will be more interested in themed tours such as Sins in The
City and the Ghost tour because they already know, in most of the cases, their history
and Maltese heritage that are told during the free tour.
We notice that tourists from Italy and France are numerous in Malta; however
there are just a few people from both these countries attending Colour My Travel’s
tours. How to explain this fact? Italian and French people are generally attracted by
cultural tourism and heritage in general, so maybe the problem is that the tours are
only in English. Unfortunately, some Italian and French people do not have a very
good level of English so it is important to be here for them also and to offer something
suitable for them. In this way, why not deliver the tours in other languages than
English as well?
Indeed, offering tours only in English must be a weak point for the company. If the
company wants to target tourists (especially during the free tour) it is a bit limited to
attracting only English-speaking people. Some people do not speak English and it is
important to attract them also. A solution would be to deliver tours in several
languages (some guides speak Italian and French) or suggest different support and
materials such as an Ipad or applications to download on the smartphone with the
contents accessible in different languages. For the other languages, we would suggest
to start with Italian, French and maybe Spanish due to the number of tourists from
Italy, France and Spain in Malta.
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According to the customers’ data19, the main customers during the free tour come
from:
-
Australia and USA (English speakers)
-
UK and Ireland (English speakers)
-
European Eastern countries (e.g. Czech Republic, Poland, Lithuania, etc)

Age
Colour My Travel attracts people of any age: young people to older people.

Price sensitivity
Especially for the free tour, Colour My Travel targets people with a small budget.
As regards the paid tours (15€), the company targets people that are ready to pay a
certain amount of money for a long and quality tour.

Avoiding standard tours
Colour My Travel aims to target local people or tourists who are looking for
unusual and themed tours. These people must be tired of standard tours. In this way,
it is important to offer an unusual tour’s content but also an experience and a specific
atmosphere attached to the tour.
2.2.3.2 Specific targets
Sometimes, it is relevant to target other tourism actors and external organisations
than just tourists to develop a company’s business.

Destination Management Companies (DMCs)
DMCs could include Colour My Travel’s tours in their offer. Indeed, these
companies offer different types of services including heritage products as guided
tours.
19 A customers’ data sheet has been created to collect key statistics during the tour. It is available in
appendices.
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
English schools
English schools are interesting targets because they are numerous in Malta.
Generally, the students that come to Malta to learn English, also want to discover the
local heritage.
A methodology to contact these two specific targets would be the following:
1) List the different DMCs and English schools in Malta (maybe create an Excel
table)
2) If possible, try to find the suitable contact: sales department, business
department, direction, etc.
3) Prepare an email text: presentation of the company, presentation of the tours,
interest of the collaboration, contact details
4) Email the different targets
5) If no reply, make a phone call: follow-up
Colour My Travel needs to think about whether it is preferable to sell directly the
tours to these organisations or start building a collaboration. This collaboration
would allow these organisations to sell directly our own products. In this case, we
need to create and calculate a procedure/system based on commission for each part:
Colour My Travel and the external organisation. The main benefits of a collaboration
(compared to directly selling the products) could be:
-
Delegate promotion and communication tasks to the external organisation
-
Extend the distribution channels
-
Attract new targets: the external organisation’s customers
An appointment request has been sent to the biggest DMCs and English Schools to
start discussing a potential collaboration. Some of them have already replied
positively and have planned an appointment with Colour My Travel’s director.
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2.3 Quality approach
2.3.1 Human resources and quality staff
When a company decides to focus on quality, it is unavoidable to have an
experienced and quality staff. A quality staff is especially essential when a company is
in direct contact with the customers; it is the case for the guides.
Colour My Travel’s guides are all licensed and experienced. They are also trained
when they start a new tour. The six guides are Maltese and bilingual in English.
In order to be closer to the customers, a suggestion would be to introduce the
staff (especially the guides) on the website or on the social media. We could take
photos of them and write a small presentation for each guide. This could help in
narrowing the distance between the company and the customers. It is important to
create social links with our customers. The guides would be seen friendly, available,
smiling, etc. In this way, the company reduces the social distance between itself and
the customers. As a result, the company would start approaching the customers and
then entering their mind to change their behaviour and influence the purchase and
the consumption (here, coming to the tours).
The staff is the reflection of the company. One important point is to make it
visible. For this, the company can use colourful t-shirts, tour signs etc. in order to
attract and captivate the customers’ attention.
As for the guides, why not create quality procedures for them? They can use
them when they have just arrived in the company and when they start a new tour.
This quality procedure will be composed of the following elements:
Fig.20 Guide’s quality procedure for each tour
1
A description of the tour
2
A description of the experience expected by the customers
3
A description of the atmosphere that needs to be attached to the tour, so a
description of the expected guide’s attitude
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4
The logistics attached to the tour (holding a sign, some materials used
during the tour such as an Ipad with full battery, etc.)
5
A possible itinerary and contents of the tour, of course modifiable by the
guide; just to give him an idea of what the company expects in term of
contents (it is the guide who will build his own tour with his research)
6
The contact details of the other guides. If the new guide wants to have
advice from them, it would be useful if they can help the new one and
provide him their experience in guiding within the company.
Source: Charlène Brunet
Of course, all the guides will be trained for each tour but this kind of procedure
could help the company save time in the training because the guide will already know
what he needs to do before the trials (it gives an insight of what the company
expects).
2.3.2 Quality policy and control
In order to keep the quality policy of the company, it is important to have some
methods and tools to use in order to control this quality. The quality needs to be
present before, during, and after the tour. It is attached to the customers but also to
the staff.
The company needs to keep the quality of its tours and control its customers’
satisfaction. For this, satisfaction questionnaires adapted to each tour need to be
shared. One online satisfaction questionnaire focused on the ghost tour has already
been created and it is shared after each tour. Another one has also been created for
the launch of Sins in The City tour with the guide doing this tour for the first time. It is
important to have feedback from the very beginning of a tour’s launch.
Another useful way to have feedbacks from the customers is to interview them
in a face to face interview or at least talk with them for a couple of minutes at the end
of the tour, for example. If one person from the company is here during the tours, it
also helps to supervise the quality during the tour.
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The relationship with the customers is before, during and after the
consumption. In this way, the company needs to keep contact with the costumer after
the tour as well. Offering the customers a gift at the end of the tour, such as a
bookmark for the free tour or a souvenir photo with a fake ghost for the ghost tour,
will help the customers remember the company and the tour after their consumption.
We should not forget that the guide needs to ask for TripAdvisor’s reviews at
the end of each tour to have more feedback about the tours and improve the rating of
the company.
A sheet20 is suggested at the beginning of every Valletta Free Tour and the
customers fill it. With this sheet, the company collects important data such as the
nationality of the attendants, the place where they stay, the way they heard about the
tour, etc. This helps to know better our customers and to improve the distribution of
our documents. This kind of data could be directly integrated in the online booking
form to avoid too many printed papers and it could save time for the staff and for the
customers also (once they register and they fill the information about them).
The beginning of a marketing strategy always starts with a market research
attached to the destination and the concerned market. Then, an internal audit of
the company needs to be carried out in order to make clear the key orientations
and objectives. After this step, the strategy can be created and the targets can be
identified. The following chapter is about the operational strategy (mixmarketing) attached to the products which are, in this case, the tours.
20
Available in appendix B.
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Chapter 3. Marketing strategy, tours and mixmarketing
Introduction
After thinking of a strategy, it is important to transform this strategy in something
operational as soon as possible. In the following chapter, we will attempt to make the
strategy operational for each tour through a mix-marketing, and start thinking of new
products.
3.1 The tours
3.1.1 Improve the current products
Here, we will approach the two regular tours: Valletta Free Tour and Sins in
The City. The case study of the ghost tour will be analysed in Part III of this
dissertation.
3.1.1.1 Valletta Free Tour
The Valletta Free Tour is usually highly appreciated by the customers according
TripAdvisor reviews. However, everything can be improved. The possible
improvements for the Valletta Free Tour would be the following:
a) Visit the interior of some places/monuments.
b) Add more atmosphere; the guide suggested for example to add some music
during the tour during a specific stop/story.
c) Add support/materials in other languages (French, Spanish, Italian):
documents, applications, Ipad contents, etc.
3.1.1.2 Sins in The City
Sins in The City is rather unique because nobody offers this kind of tour. The
possible improvements for Sins in The City tour could be the following:
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a) Visit the interior of some places/monuments.
b) Add music of past times to help build the scenery of the story: relaxed melody
for Pinto when he was with his mistresses for example.
c) At the end of the tour, on the tables of the café, why not put some decoration
(beads, feathers…) to remind us of the sins. We could also put some cards on
the table illustrating the seven sins or even play a game (board game, cards…)
about the seven sins.
3.1.2 New products’ development
In order to increase the volume of sales and enlarge the global offer of Colour
My Travel, it is important to start thinking of new tours.
We notice that the main tours are in Valletta, so why not enlarge the company’s
activity area? We can suggest:

Tours in cities other than Valletta: e.g Mdina

Tours in the countryside, nature and villages

1 day tours through Malta or Gozo
It is still important to have themed tours; for this, we need to base on Malta’s
resources and heritage but also on the internal resources (guides, experience, and
knowledge) to make the tours possible. The following tours are suggested:
3.1.2.1 Mdina Free Tour
Mdina is a very nice city to walk around and it benefits from a great heritage.
Why not run a free tour there in addition to Valletta? It would still be a 90 minutestour, we just change the location. The guides showed an interest in doing a tour in this
city. The tour will be based on donations as the Valletta Free Tour.
3.1.2.2 Discover the Maltese religious heritage
In Malta, tourists can visit more than 300 churches and enjoy the wonderful
architecture and beautiful pieces of art these churches have to offer. The most
breathtaking religious monument is undoubtedly St John’s Co-Cathedral in Valletta
built by the Knights of Malta. It could be interesting to build an itinerary of religious
77
monuments and stories attached to Saints or to religion in general. This tour will
include the visits of churches, cathedrals, chapels etc. Beyond storytelling, the guide
will also make the attendants curious about the art and the architecture of the
different monuments visited. In this way, the guide will talk about the different
techniques used for a fresco or a façade for example.
This tour could be enlarged to several locations through Malta and/or Gozo or
be limited to a specific area (depending on the request, on the internal resources, etc.)
The targets for this tour will be:
-
People interested in religion or religious heritage in general
-
Art lovers or people who want to improve their knowledge about art and
architecture
As for the price, it will depend on the itinerary but it will be around 20 to 30€.
3.1.2.3 Enjoy and relax in the Maltese countryside
This tour will be a full day tour and could include the visit of nature reserves,
with fauna and flora observation. The fauna and flora protection awareness will be
also very important in this tour. It will be an educative tour but also a very relaxing
tour. Beyond the natural and scientist approach, the guide could speak about some
local legends attached to the places.
During this tour, we suggest a picnic in nature. It will be an occasion to
socialize and to make people taste local Maltese food and drinks (Maltese wine,
Maltese beer, Maltese bread, etc.). During the break, the guide could give the
customers some traditional recipes of Maltese dishes (orally or written on a paper as
a gift).
During the tour, the customers could collect some plants to bring at home
depending on the zone legislation. In this way, the guide could tell the attendants
what to do with these plants and how to transform them in beauty products, how to
eat them or use them in infusions or finally how to use them for the house/decoration
for example. Nowadays, people are more demanding about homemade products in
their everyday life.
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The targets for this tour will be:
-
Nature lovers
-
People who like walking in nature
-
People who want to escape from the city and have a peaceful and relaxing
break in the nature
As for the price, it will be around 50€ (including the tasting of Maltese food and
drinks).
3.2 Distribution
The distribution allows a product to be brought to the customers in order for them to
buy or consume this one.
3.2.1 Online
Currently, the only distribution channel of Colour My Travel is its website. On
the website, people can register their bookings. The staff then contacts the costumers
to conclude the booking by email and to proceed to the payment (in the case it is a
paid tour).
On social media and specialized websites, events are created to push more the
tours’ sales; it is the case on Facebook or Couchsurfing. On these two platforms, the
events are regularly updated and people can register thanks to a link which directs
them to Colour My Travel’s website.
Why not enlarge the distribution channels? This could help target more people
in different places and moments and, as a result, increase the volume of potential
customers.
3.2.2 Office and point of sale
Opening an office with a reception would allow the opportunity to be face to
face with the customers. This could enlarge the number of customers. Indeed, people
79
visiting Valletta for the day do not have time to connect online to have information
about the tours, for example. Being face to face with the customers also creates more
proximity with them which is a strong point in creating social links and building a
relationship based on trust. With an office/reception, we can also work on the
decoration and atmosphere of the point of sale. This could influence more the
customers’ behaviour and make them buy the tours. It is more difficult to make
people buy a product online than face to face. The face to face influences the
customers thanks to the staff in contact with them (bring more knowledge and
experience) and the atmosphere of the point of sale. People must be at ease in the
office. For this, we can create a universe reflecting the company’s image and
philosophy. We can also use the five senses to influence the customers’ behaviour. For
this why not use photos of the guides and tours, play with the smell of the place, add
some relax music etc? In addition, a point of sale could also be used as an office and it
will be better for the logistics: to stock the support material, to print documents, to
have meetings with providers, etc.
3.2.3 Other sellers/intermediaries
Another possibility to enlarge the distribution would be to work with
intermediaries. Indeed, tourist offices, English schools, or DMCs could sell for us our
tours (with a commission). For this, we could use a kind of voucher for the purchase
of paid tours. Working with intermediaries would allow for the targeting of other
people and still increase the volume of sales.
For the free tours, we now put calendars of tours of the month (dates and
times) at the reception of the tourist office, in hotels, in English Schools etc. With the
calendar, people can directly know if there is a tour or not on the date they wish to
attend the tour.
3.3 Promotion
Promotion is essential to make the products, but also the company, known by
the targets. We can use several means and tools to work on promotion. As regards
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Colour My Travel, several means are already used but some could be used in addition
in a near future:
3.3.1 Social media
Social media are nowadays essential to promote a company easily and freely. Colour
My Travel is present on three social media:
-
Facebook
Instagram
Twitter
On Facebook, the company has four pages: one dedicated to the whole company,
another one focused on the ghost tour product, a third one about the free walking
tour and a last one focused on Sins in the City tour. These four pages are updated
regularly with posts, photos, events, etc.
3.3.2 Direct marketing and distribution of documents
Thanks to the customers’ data sheet used during the free tours, we know the
place where the customers stay (which type of accommodation, which location).
Knowing this information, we can distribute bookmarks, brochures, and calendar of
the month to hotels, English schools and tourist offices.
3.3.3 Direct communication
Colour My Travel directly communicates before and during the tour thanks to
visual materials:
-
The guide wears a colourful t-shirt of the company
Another person holds a sign during the tour: 3 signs are used (Valletta Free
Tour, Sins in the City and Valletta Ghost tour)
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Fig.21 The three signs used during the tours
Source: Colour My Travel
These signs allow the company to attract people who are walking around and who do
not know what to do. It is very important to be visible to the people.
3.3.4 Travel sites and reviews websites
The use of travel sites offers the opportunity to show the quality of the
company through specialized websites and reviews from the tourists.
3.3.4.1 TripAdvisor
Colour My Travel has an account on TripAdvisor. For the moment, the company
has 63 reviews and the average grade is 4,5/5. It is classified 7th out of 15 tours in
Valletta.
We can say that Colour My Travel has really good reviews and the staff constantly
tries to get more reviews to overtake the competitors. For this, it is important to give
the customers bookmarks at the end of the tour and kindly ask them to post a review
on TripAdvisor.
3.3.4.2 Couchsurfing
Colour My Travel also uses Couchsurfing to create tours events. It helps
capture the attention of tourists who have just arrived in Malta and who do not know
what to do yet during their stay.
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3.3.5 Public relations
Public relations allow for the spreading of a positive image of a company to its
different publics:
-
Customers
-
Financial partners
Opinion leaders
Shareholders
Public authorities
Providers
Distributors
Employees
Press, etc.
As for Colour My Travel, it would be a good idea to attend some tourism
exhibitions/shows/events or also conferences (even video conferences) in Malta and
abroad (Italy is the closest country, or Great Britain/Ireland where the company’s
main English-speaking customers are in Europe).
It would be also ideal to obtain some press articles in press journals or
newspapers, online journals or specialized magazines. This could be an opportunity
to introduce the company and the different tours offered.
Another idea would be to organize a special event/a special tour for a specific
public: journalists, providers, opinion leaders, etc. Then, these people could talk about
the company during their own activities and they can collaborate more with us.
3.3.6 Internet
The website already has a nice design and it is attractive. It has also a
responsive design, which is quite interesting. However, it would be beneficial to make
the website more dynamic and interactive.
In this way, why not add a chat? This would allow the staff to answer quicker
to the customers’ question than by email (we can register the history of this chat if we
want to keep the customers details).
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In addition, something interesting to suggest is to create a blog on the website.
By creating a blog, we add more privacy with the customers; the latter will know
more about the company: its philosophy, its activity, etc.). Also, it is an occasion for
the customers to know more about Malta. On this blog, we could add articles about
the company but also about Malta in general, current and future events, etc. Photos
will be welcomed as well as videos, and the internet users could add contents
themselves for the blog.
It could be a strong point for Colour My Travel to translate its website to target
more people, especially the ones who do not speak English. The website could be
translated in:
-
Maltese
French
Spanish
Italian
Why these languages?
Maltese is the the national language of Malta and a minority of Maltese do not
speak English. French, Italian, and Spanish people sometimes have difficulties in
understanding English. Of course, it is not necessary to translate the whole website
but at least the main information such as: the meeting point, the tours’ descriptions,
etc.
3.4 Volume and budget
3.4.1 Tours volume
Colour My Travel is focused on quality rather than on quantity. However, the
volume of sales is important to study for every business.
The groups during Colour My Travel’s tours are limited to 30 people to keep
the quality. When you have more than 30 people, it starts to be difficult for the
comfort of the audience (narrow streets, difficulties to hear, etc.). Even the guide can
encounter difficulties to manage a group of a big size (talking loud, being careful of
the security, not losing people, etc.).
Three tours are held regularly:
84
-
Valletta Free Tour: 2x per week
-
Valletta Ghost tour: 1x per week
-
Sins in the City: around 1x to 3x per month
Other tours are held on an occasional basis. This is the case of the private tours upon
request.
Improving the volume of sales requires to improvement of the volume of tours.
To improve the volume of tours, we can add tours that are more regular (e.g. offer 3x
per week Valletta Free tour instead of 2x) or also create and sell new tours.
If the volume of sales is increased, it means that the money value will also be
extended, which is a good point for the company and for potential investments to
grow the business.
3.4.2 Pricing
Colour My Travel offers the Valletta Free Tour which is based on donations.
The other two regular tours have a price of 15€. The private and customised tours
have a price based on a quotation depending on the group’ size, the internal
resources, the duration of the tour and the itinerary.
3.4.3 Budget and financial resources
The company is currently in a good financial situation and sales are positive.
For example the ghost tour is often fully booked one week before it is conducted.
While the company is financially viable and strong, the strategy at the moment is to
make it popular and increase the number of clients hence an increase of the sales’
volume and awareness.
The company is unwilling to provide the exact statistics on the financial side
for commercial reasons.
85
The operational part of the marketing strategy is for the present time but also
for the near future. The company will choose if the mentioned ideas are suitable
for the near future depending on possible investments. Other ideas and
procedures have already been started such as contacting DMCs and English
Schools to discuss a potential collaboration.
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CONCLUSION PART II
In Part II, the company was introduced and analysed. This allowed specific objectives
that helped building the proposal of a marketing strategy to emerge. The main
purpose was to build a proper writing document as a proposal which the company
can base on for the near future of its development. This marketing strategy makes an
assessment of the current situation of Colour My Travel and gives key orientations for
further development in the near future. The marketing strategy tries to keep
innovation in the centre of the development. The experiential marketing side will be
addressed in more detail in the next part with the case study of the ghost tour. This
will be a kind of template for the further development of the other tours through the
experiential marketing’s angle.
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PART III: THE GHOST TOUR,
A
KEY
PRODUCT
TO
ENHANCE
EXPERIENTIAL
MARKETING
88
INTRODUCTION PART III
After the proposal of a global marketing strategy for Colour My Travel, it is the
moment to focus on a specific product. I chose to focus on the ghost tour because, first
of all, I am specialized in spooky and ghost tourism and, secondly, I think it is a good
example to show how to add experiential marketing in an unusual tour to keep it
innovative. Indeed, ghost tours have become quite common now in capital cities;
therefore it is essential to offer them as experiential tours; here experiential
marketing is a key stake for the business development of this kind of products.
In addition to the proposal of a marketing strategy, the second mission was to
improve the current ghost tour. Several surveys, in the form of interviews or
questionnaires, were made during the internship’s period in order to understand the
different opinions and expectations from different types of people regarding the
ghost tour. The results of these surveys helped to suggest different improvements in
various areas of the product.
Chapter 1. Understand opinions and expectations
regarding the product
Introduction
Before improving a product, we need to know what its current strong and wrong
points are. Different surveys as well as observations can help to identify them.
Qualitative and quantitative surveys, such as interviews, were carried out during the
internship. The results of these surveys were a determining factor in getting to know
what people think of ghost tourism in general and of Colour My Travel’s ghost tour.
This allowed for the opportunity to analyse the current offer in order to improve it.
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1.1 Presentation of the surveys and the methodology
1.1.1 Which information to collect and for which objectives?
I carried out the surveys in order to obtain crucial information about
innovation, experiential marketing, dark tourism, ghost tourism, ghost tours in
general, and Colour My Travel’s ghost tour. This information was of different sorts:
-
Feedback
-
Opinions
-
Preferences
-
Ideas
-
Knowledge
-
Experiences in the past
-
Recommendations
We cannot improve a product without knowing customers’ opinions and
expectations, information about the type of tourism and industry’s trends, for
example.
The objectives of these surveys were to:
a) Know what different kinds of people think of innovation, experiential
marketing, ghost tourism and ghost tours
b) Use this different feedback and these ideas to make emerge key orientations
for the improvement of Colour My Travel’s ghost tour
1.1.2 Observation
The first step when we want to improve a product is to observe it and
understand it as well as its key characteristics. During the internship’s period, I
attended the Valletta ghost tour every week. Therefore, I could observe and supervise
the quality of this tour regularly. I have become aware of the different strong and
weak points of the ghost tour. Moreover, in the past, I had attended ghost tours in
Scotland so I could compare several offers.
90
1.1.3 Interviewing different kinds of people
Beyond the simple observation by myself, I decided to interview people who
worked for the company, as well as others who did not. In total, I interviewed 10
different persons during the internship. The different types of people were the
following:
a) Customers
Customers were especially useful regarding the opinions and feedback about the
current ghost tour, as well as the expectations and recommendations for the future
improved tour.
b) Ghost hunting experts
The members from Ghost Squad Malta21 helped me to clearly see the differences
between a ghost hunt and a ghost tour. It was also an occasion to discuss a potential
collaboration between Colour My Travel and them.
c) Dark tourism expert
As ghost tourism is attached to dark tourism, it was essential to interview a dark
tourism’s expert to better understand the different stakes of this unusual type of
tourism.
d) Professional guides
The guides were interesting to interview because the guide’s performance is crucial
for the good quality of a tour. In this way, knowing how to approach a ghost tourism
as a guide is important.
The interviews’ structures were different regarding the type of people
interviewed but all of them were about innovation, experiential marketing, ghost
tourism and ghost tours. The appendix C presents the table of the different interviews
carried out. Interviews’ structures, summaries and transcription are available in
appendices.
21
Maltese ghost hunt team.
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1.1.4 Satisfaction questionnaire
In order to target the Valletta ghost tour’s customers, an online satisfaction
questionnaire has been created. It is shared after each ghost tour to collect feedback.
Below is the calculation of the sample size of the questionnaire:
1.1.4.1 Calculation of the sample’s size
Targets: Ghost tour’s attendants
Tool: Google Form
Sample’s size calculation:
-
n = sample’s size
-
z = confidence level = 95%
-
p = percentage of the people that attended the ghost tour (366 in June) out of
the total of the parent population, that is to say the total number of
customers/attendants of all our tours (1324 in June), so 27,6%
-
e= margin of error
Under 100 000 of the parent population, we need to use a corrective factor:
For a 10% margin of error:
n = 3.84*0.276(1-0.276)/0.01 = 76.73
n’= 76.73 / (1+76.73/366) = 63,43
As a result we have a sample for a 10% margin of error of: 64 customers attended the
ghost tour.
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Therefore, we needed to send the questionnaire of satisfaction to at least 64
customers who have already attended the ghost tour. It was better to choose recent
customers as they will have a fresh feedback of their consumption’s experience.
The utility of this questionnaire was to highlight the customers’ satisfaction
regarding the ghost tour, having their opinions, criticisms and recommendations to
be able to improve the product. The questionnaire had been tested twice before
sharing it in order to check the relevance of the questions and the good logic of the
different possible answers.
1.1.4.2 Satisfaction questionnaire’s structure
The online satisfaction questionnaire was attached to the Valletta ghost tour
and to ghost tours in general. It was divided in three main parts, which are the
following:
Fig.22 Subparts of the satisfaction questionnaire
Behaviour
• Frequency of attending
ghost tours
• Participation
of
another ghost tour in
the past: information
about it
• Ways of hearing about
the company
Motivations
and opinions
Personal
information
• Reasons for choosing
to do a ghost tour
• Expectations about a
ghost tour in general
• Opinions
about
Valletta ghost tour's
duration and break
• Grade to Valletta ghost
tour
• Comments
and
recommendations
(free questions)
• Maltese or tourist
• Age
• Attendants:
friends,
family, couple, solo
Source: Charlène BRUNET
I wanted to add a qualitative aspect in this questionnaire; it is the reason why
some free and open questions are present such as: “Any other comments or remarks
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about Valletta Ghost Tour? Do not hesitate:” or “Any recommendations to improve this
ghost tour?”. These kinds of questions helped in collecting ideas of improvements for
the tour.
1.2 Audit of the ghost tour through customers’ feedback: a lack of
experiential
1.2.1 General quality of the tour
As regards the quality of the tour, the customers are rather happy. Indeed,
92,6% of the questionnaire’s respondents think that the tour is at least satisfactory
(42.6% of them think that it is totally satisfactory). When it is about giving a grade to
the tour, the average is 7/10, which is rather good. The three interviewed customers
really enjoyed the tour as well.
The fact that the ghost tour is already a quality product is important because
the improvements will be consequently more ambitious, and more specific to a topic
and an area.
1.2.2 Locations
Generally, the interviewees and the questionnaire’s respondents agree with
the fact that the itinerary is good because Valletta is a very nice city to walk around by
night. However, a lot of feedback mentioned that it is too bad that the customers
cannot go inside the buildings or monuments during the visit. The reason why people
mentioned to go inside the buildings is, most of time, to see the old decoration inside
the places, feel the atmosphere, and add value to the tour.
1.2.3 Stories
Ghost stories are one of the main characteristics of a ghost tour. This fact is
confirmed by the motivations of the clients who argue what they expect beforehand
from a ghost tour is storytelling (77,8%). The interviewed couple X (Interview, couple
X, appendix H), thinks that the guide approaches very well the history in the stories
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which help build a context and a favourable environment to storytelling thanks to
historical highlights.
Nevertheless, some people think that the guide’s speech is too long and
includes too many details and verbose, which make it boring at times or, at least, not
very exciting. Another feedback is that the stories are, still according to the
customers, not scary and gory enough with a lack of esotericism and blood. A remark
from a customer mentions that: “I did feel it was more of a history tour as opposed to a
ghost walk”. In this way, we can say that this ghost tour includes too much historical
detail to the detriment of bloody and spooky parts.
1.2.4 Atmosphere, effects and senses
Generally, the customers enjoy the tour’s content and storytelling. Nevertheless,
according to them, the tour does not offer a real consumption’s experience. In this
way, because of a lack of effects, the atmosphere of the tour does not reflect the topic
of ghosts, the paranormal, fear, and surprise. Therefore, we can say that the tour’s
atmosphere is not “powerful” enough compared to its topic, which is very attached to
imagination and strong emotional experiences. There is here a difference, a gap,
between the title of the tour (ghost tour) and the real experience provided during the
product’s consumption.
The customers underline that their emotions and senses are not stimulated
enough during the tour. Moreover, they argue that they were not scared or surprised.
Fear is yet considered a motivating factor in attending a ghost tour (37% of the
questionnaire’s respondents are looking to being scared during a ghost tour).
1.2.5 The guide’s performance
According to most of people, the guide is very professional, knowledgeable,
realistic and a good storyteller. Moreover, he knows very well the stories and the
historical context attached to them.
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Despite his professionalism, some of the questionnaire’s respondents argue
that the guide has a lack of dynamism and entertainment. Indeed, the guide is not
very scary during the tour: lack of tone in the voice, not very expressive, and does not
have a spooky and surprising attitude. Moreover, the tour is not interactive enough
and the customers are not really involved in it.
1.2.6 Conclusion of the different feedback
Through the different research undertaken, we can admit that a ghost tour
needs to be educative, historical, but also very entertaining. Here we feel a lack of
entertainment and a lack of senses and emotions’ stimulation.
Therefore, and according to the collected feedback from interviews and
questionnaires as well from the research and my experience in ghost tourism, we
suggest to add more feelings, sensations, senses’ stimulation and experiential
marketing in this tour to make it more entertaining and, of course, scarier. It is
important to build an atmosphere and a scenery around this tour. The attendants
need to be kept in a special universe from the beginning until the end of the tour. We
can also say that the set up of this universe that the tour will deliver needs to start
before the tour through the product’s promotion.
1.3 The key orientations of improvement
1.3.1 Improve the guide’s performance
1.3.1.1 The importance of appearance
The current guide wears casual clothes during the tour. Here we suggest that
the guide wears a specific costume, hat and holding a walking stick or an old light.
With this, the guide will be more visible to the people walking around Valletta and
will make them curious about the tour.
Moreover, with a costume, the guide will be more associated to the tour’s
universe which is attached to ghosts, a dark atmosphere and the paranormal.
Wearing a costume is also positive for the audience because it will stimulate their
vision sense, which is interesting for an experiential marketing’s angle.
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However, we need to take in consideration that the weather is quite hot in
Malta during summer period (even in the evening). Wearing a costume during
summer may be annoying for the guide. As a result, next winter, the guide will try the
costume and during the summer period he will hold only a hat, a walking stick or an
old light.
1.3.1.2 Involve more the tourists during the tour
Here we suggest reinforcing the interactivity of the tour. The guide needs to
involve more the tourists by asking questions and make them participate. Why not
make the customers play a role or use an electronic device to investigate the potential
spirits? If the tourists are more involved, they will live the experience more and will
want to share it with their relatives. This interactivity is possible if the guide learns
how to adapt his speech to the audience. He also needs to put the audience at ease so
that, in turn, they become more willing to speak with him and ask questions, for
example.
1.3.1.3 Play a theatrical performance and add some drama and bloody
parts
Here we suggest that the guide becomes a persona during the tour. A persona
plays the role of someone else. It can be a famous character of the history or a famous
ghost or vampire, for example. Becoming a persona during the tour will add more
scenery to the tour and the guide will be more at ease in playing the part of an actor
as he will not be himself anymore, but a new character. The guide also needs to
change the tone of his voice and surprise the customers punctually by shouting.
As some tourists think sometimes that the stories have too many details and
are too boring, we can suggest to add more gory stories with bloody parts. Why not
describe torture methods of the past, for instance? The guide could show some
pictures or drawings of these tortures.
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1.3.2 Use more effects during the tours
In order to make this ghost tour more experiential, it is important to add some
effects. For this, we suggest adding some sounds of shouts with an electronic device
or also add some smoke.
The effects could also be used by different extra people in the background to
surprise the customers and improve the scenery. It could be a re-enactment of a
crime, for example.
Using technological devices to get paranormal evidences such as investigation
equipment would also add a strong and powerful content to the tour. These
technological additions help produce noises or voices, and catch shapes or shades
with infra-red cameras, for example. All of this will definitely help in adding effects
during the tour.
1.3.3 Stimulate the customers’ imagination and emotions
It is important to start making the customers’ imagination and emotions
evolve since the very beginning; before the tour and the consumption. This starts
with the promotion of the product. To promote the tour why not broadcast videos
taken during the previous tour on social media in order to place the customers into
the ghost tour’s mood before the consumption? We can also share spooky photos on
social media and create some suspense before the tour by asking some questions
such as “imagine for which reason Mr. X kills Mr. Y?”.
During the tour, the different effects as well as the guide’s performance and the
locations visited will help to favour an imagination and stimulate the emotions. The
main work of the guide will be to maintain the customers’ imagination, triggered
before the tour, thanks to his performance and the tour’s drama and experience.
After the tour, it is important to keep the customers remembering the tour in a
positive way. For this, we suggest offering (or selling) a souvenir photo with a fake
ghost at the end of the tour. This photo could be shown to the customers’ relatives
which indirectly helps with the tour’s promotion.
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1.3.4 As a conclusion: a more experiential tour
As a conclusion, the ghost tour needs to get an experiential marketing’s angle in
order to satisfy the demand of experience and of fear requested by the customers.
Therefore, if we base on the five pillars of experiential marketing according to
HETZEL, we can work on the ghost tour’s improvement from an experiential’s side.
We remember here that the five pillars of experiential marketing are the following:
-
Surprising
-
Offering the extraordinary
-
Creating social links
-
Using the brand to support the experiential
-
Stimulating the five senses
The following figures illustrate the different improvements and ideas for the ghost
tours according to the five pillars of experiential marketing. The first figure focuses
on the first four pillars and the second chart is dedicated to the five senses only.
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Fig.23 Ghost tour and experiential marketing
Surprising
Offering the extraordinary
Creating social links
Using the brand to support
experiential
Escape from the routine, offer
Fantastic, mystical and
Proximity with the customers,
Company’s identity, image and
the unexpected
imaginary world
interactivity
philosophy shared with the
customers
Tell unusual stories with Ghost
bloody
parts:
stories,
unusual storytelling
contents, legends, mysteries
to
a
use
good Ask the customers questions Colour My Travel’s quality
the about
customers’ imagination
their
paranormal guides
experiences
Going in hidden parts of Add characters in the scenery Know their motivations in Make the company visible and
Valletta,
customers
feel (real actors, fictional actors)
attending a ghost tour
remembered: sign, bookmarks,
privileged to go there.
souvenir
photo
fictional/fake ghost
Make the customers imagine The guide needs to be social,
the end of the stories: avoid interactive
verbose and too many detailed sometimes
tales
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and
funny
with
a
Invite a ghost hunt team to add Ask the customers to take
more
science,
proofs
and photos during the tour: make
serious of paranormal universe them participate. If they take a
mysterious photo they will be
happy to share it with the
other attendants and with the
staff. This helps a lot in
creating social links.
Make the customers play a role
during the stories. They could
perform as a character, even
play a minor part as an extra
character.
Source: Charlène Brunet
In order to add experiential marketing in this ghost tour, the company also needs to stimulate the customers’ senses. The following figure
presents
other
ideas
attached
to
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the
senses’
stimulation.
Fig.24 Ghost tour and senses’ stimulation
Vision
Hearing
Guide in costume: cape, Add
sounds
Smell
(shouts, Smell the old and the
hat, holding a walking complaints),
stick or an old light
Touch
Taste
Touch old walls during Offer a dark/bloody
ancient
the tour
drink at the end of
mysterious and scary
the
music
smell,
in
the
background
tour:
vision,
taste
stimulated.
E.g.:
Dracula blood punch
or
drinks
with
blackcurrant
liquor
or blackberries.
Dark streets
Importance
of
the Make
smell
guide’s voice tone and perfume
style
that
an
old Add some gadgets on the Add
one of the characters
mentioned in the ghost
or
another
character
Going inside of buildings:
Why not make an old book circulate between the
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funny
could tables during the break sweets on the tables
belong to the blue lady, (slimy things for e.g.)
stories,
some
during the break
see old, creepy decoration
attendants? They could smell the old pages and
touch the cover… Books help the imagination to
evolve. The book might be about sorcery or magical
recipes.
Taking photos of orbs or
mysterious shades
Source:
Charlène BRUNET
Besides the five senses, as was mentioned in Part I, ghost tourism can stimulate another sense called the sixth sense. Stimulating this
special sense would allow the tour to go further in the sensory experience. For this we can suggest the following ideas:
a) Make the customers experience the ghost hunt experience with a quick paranormal investigation thanks to electronic devices.
b) Make the customers feel a special atmosphere inside a building or in a cemetery, for example.
c) Sharing paranormal experiences with the customers or ask about their potential experiences they have lived in the past. This also
help in creating links between the customers themselves and with the guide.
d) The guide needs to believe in the paranormal, at least during the tour, and he needs to share his belief to the audience. Two
interviewed guides argue that it is better if the guide is really into the paranormal during the tour. The following quotes illustrate
this point: “…and you have to make them believe that you believe it… in fact in this 1hour, 30minutes or what else, I believe in the
stories.” (Mr. X, guide, appendix E) and “He should believe in paranormal activity” (Mrs. J, guide, appendix F).
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These quantitative and qualitative surveys allowed for the understanding of what
the opinions and the expectations regarding the ghost tour were. The other
interviewees not included in customers (guides, ghost hunt team, dark tourism
expert) helped in understanding better ghost tourism, ghost tours and the
dimensions attached to this product.
According to the different feedback collected, the current ghost tour is seen as a
normal tour or historical tour with ghost stories. Some people think the tour is
not a proper ghost tour. As a result, the stakes are to make this ghost tour more
powerful and more experiential for the customers.
Chapter 2. Ghost tour and mix-marketing: how to
offer this product?
Introduction
After highlighting the different strong and weak points of the product and underlining
the key orientations to improve it, it is time to think on how to offer the tour to the
customers. Through promotion of the tour’s attributes and the delivered experience,
the different suggestions will be introduced.
2.1 Promotion, distribution and price
2.1.1 Price and distribution
The price of the ghost tour is currently 15€. If it is improved, then the price
must increase. For example, if the tour includes going inside buildings, for sure the
price will increase because the logistics of the tour will be more difficult and the
company will need to ask for the access to the buildings; in this way it will be a more
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privileged tour. If several buildings are visited, and if electronic devices are used (we
need to buy them before), then the price could increase up to 20€ or 25€.
As for the distribution, it is the same as the other tours: mainly on Colour My
Travel’s website. The tour is also visible on social media, tourist offices and hotels.
Here we must remember the potential collaborations with English schools and DMCs
that were discussed earlier.
The future point of sale must be divided in two universes: Colour My Travel’s
tours on one side, and the dark tourism’s tours including the ghost tour, on the other
side. The latter must be very dark with a specific scenery and atmosphere.
Finally, if a dark tourism network is created, the tour must also be known
through it. This would help Colour My Travel attract people interested in dark
tourism in general.
2.1.2 A promotion focused on experiential marketing
The promotion of the ghost tour will be the same as the other tours and it was
introduced in the global marketing strategy and in Part II. However, we can add some
changes with regards to the ghost tour.
2.1.2.1 Target specific people and promote the experience
Why not promote the ghost tour’s experience to a specific target likely
interested in the product? On the website or on social media we could speak to the
customers by highlighting the experience and the link between it and themselves. For
instance, why not write: “Passionate about the paranormal or just curious of seeing
ghosts and feeling a spooky atmosphere? Come and join our next ghost tour!”.
2.1.2.2 Play with the sensory
Since the very beginning, the company can play with the customers’ senses;
this starts with the tour’s promotion. On the website, the company could dedicate a
space to dark tourism and to the ghost tour. There we can play sounds (shouts for
example) or broadcast videos or ghost hunting TV show extracts and also spooky
photos taken during the tour.
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2.1.3 Highlight experiential, entertainment and education
The tour’s promotion needs to focus on the paranormal and scary experience
delivered but also on entertainment and education. A ghost tour is, firstly,
entertaining and educational. Entertaining because the customers are here to enjoy
an unusual tour and be surprised, and educational because they also want to learn
about the local history, the famous characters or the legends of the place.
Since the aim is to add more experiential marketing to this product, it is also
important to communicate about the experience of fear, surprises, the paranormal
universe and the senses’ stimulation.
2.2 The product: the operational improvements
2.2.1 The effects during the tour
The different effects suggested for the ghost tour are in Chapter 1. Here we will
try to sum up the most important ones in an operational perspective through an
action sheet.
Fig.25 Action sheet for more effects during the tour
Title: Create more effects during the ghost tour
Objectives and
-
Reinforce the tour’s experience
expected result
-
Answer the customers’ expectations regarding the
tour (demand of experience)
Theme
-
Favour the memory of the product’s consumption
-
Make the tour more interactive and entertaining
Experiential marketing – production - creativity
The actions planned Description:
During the tour, we suggest adding sounds, visual materials
and electronic devices to measure and investigate the
paranormal. The sounds will be recorded before the tour and
put into a small and discreet speaker. The sounds will be: old
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music of the past, spooky noises e.g. footsteps noises, shouts,
complaints, or scary laughs, for example. These different
noises can be found on the internet or the staff can record
itself some noises.
As for the visual side, we can show intriguing photos of orbs
and shades: evidence of potential ghosts.
The guide can make the customers test electronic devices for
paranormal investigation such as ghost boxes, infra-red
cameras, thermal cameras, etc. With this, the tour will be
more entertaining and more into the paranormal sphere
with an educational tone (how to use these electronic
devices, what they measure, etc.). Before this, the guide
himself needs to be trained to use these materials. The ghost
hunt team (already contacted) could train the guide or even
make a demonstration of ghost investigation in front of the
audience or in a video.
Who manages the Colour My Travel; partners: ghost hunt team
actions?
Calendar and budget The effects could be included in the tour as soon as possible
during Autumn for Halloween, for example. The company
already has a speaker. It needs to buy some electronic
devices or invite the ghost hunt team directly. A ghost box is
around 100€ and cameras are much more expensive. In this
way, why not buy only a ghost box or a temperature
detector. The cameras will be brought by the ghost hunt
team.
Adding effects during a tour is quite operational so it would not be difficult to
put some into the ghost tour. Colour My Travel’s director will decide and select the
different effects he wants to add in the near future.
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2.2.2 The guide’s performance
The guide’s performance needs to be improved to get more quality in the tour.
Indeed, the tour’s quality depends a lot on the guide’s performance because it is he
who delivers the stories and who sets up a specific tour’s atmosphere. The following
action sheet tries to sum up the different actions attached to the improvement of the
guide’s performance in an operational way.
Fig.26 Action sheet to improve the guide’s performance
Title: Improve the guide’s performance
Objectives and
-
Reinforce the tour’s experience
expected result
-
Help in the set-up of a specific atmosphere
-
Improve the stories and their delivery
-
Improve the interactivity and the entertainment of
the tour
Guiding – production - acting and scenery
Theme
The actions planned Description:
The guide needs to wear a costume in order to be visible and
be in line with the ghosts’ universe and scenery. Apart from
his appearance, he needs to work on his attitude during the
tour. Here we can suggest he takes some drama/theatre
lessons with someone in order to work on the charisma, the
tone of voice, and the capacity of playing a role during a tour.
If the guide acts as a persona, then he will need to know very
well the character he will play (appearance, personality, life).
The guide will also need to do further research to find more
bloody/gory stories and, perhaps, funny stories to tell; for
this the logistics of the tour will be changed as well as the
itinerary.
Who manages the Colour My Travel including the ghost tour’s guide
actions?
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Calendar and budget Colour My Travel needs to buy a costume and an accessory
(walking stick, hat or old light); we can find all of this below
100€ in different shops. The costume will be worn from next
Autumn/Winter. For the drama lessons, we can find another
guide for free used to ghost tours to teach the current guide
how to act, or call a theatre teacher (the price will depend on
the hours of lessons). All the changes can start to be in effect
from Autumn/Winter.
Improving the guide’s performance is more delicate than just adding some
effects in the tour. Indeed, here we talk about human skills and not only some
electronic devices. The guide needs to agree with all the changes and be ready to
improve his performance. I already ask him about the costume and he is ready to do
some efforts to see improvements in this tour.
2.2.3 Collaboration with a ghost hunt team
A Maltese ghost hunt team has been contacted to discuss a potential
collaboration between it and Colour My Travel. First of all, I attended one of their
ghost hunts and, there, I introduced Colour My Travel. Later I interviewed two
members of the team and suggested to them the idea of a collaboration. To conclude, I
invited them to Colour My Travel’s ghost tour. Why contact this ghost hunt team?
a) Add a scientist and an educative side to the ghost tour
b) Work with a specific field’s experts (in this case, the paranormal) and add
credibility to the company
c) Get a better visibility and promotion: the ghost hunt team will communicate
on the collaboration with Colour My Travel
d) Improve the tour with the ghost hunt team’s help: filming the ghost tour,
demonstrating the use of paranormal investigation’s devices, etc.
This ghost hunt team already came twice to Colour My Travel’s ghost tour to
observe how it was. During these two tours, the team filmed and made one
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promotional short video and interviewed Colour My Travel’s director. This video was
shared on social media.
The collaboration will be further discussed in order to see the different issues and
stakes for both the organisations in the near future.
2.3 Other products to offer attached to the ghost tour?
To go further in the improvement of the ghost tour, why not also offer other
products attached to it? Then, Colour My Travel could make packages of different
tours and, in this way, build a complementary offer in ghost tourism with various
products.
2.3.1 Other locations for new ghosts tours?
The current ghost tour is only held in Valletta. In order to extend the offer,
Colour My Travel could offer other ghost tours (it does not have to be as frequent as
the one in Valletta) in other old cities such as Mdina and Vittoriosa. These tours, as
well as the guides who will be in charge of them, need to follow the same instructions
and ideas suggested earlier regarding the adding of experiential marketing in the
ghost tour. Therefore, Colour My Travel could offer several quality ghost tours with
an experience attached to them but in different locations, which will add value to the
global offer.
2.3.2 A new product focused on paranormal experience
Colour My Travel could go further and offer a product focused on the
paranormal experience and not ghost stories anymore. This could be named “the
ghostly experience” or “the paranormal experience”. This product could include the
visit of cemeteries, remote villages or abandoned houses during the night with a
ghost hunt investigation and, perhaps, keep some small storytelling as well. The ghost
hunt team will be very useful in the case of such a product as they can provide the
good methodology of paranormal investigation.
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2.3.3 Occasional and private events upon request
Apart from the regular tours, occasional and private events could be organised
by Colour My Travel. These events can be organised for the Halloween period with
the visit of buildings that are usually closed, for example, and the tour could be
followed with a dinner. Private events could also be suggested to the customers.
Among private events, why not offer a murder mystery night? These special nights
are organised during a dinner; here we could offer a dinner with Maltese specialities.
During this dinner, there is a plot and the customers need to identity a fictitious
murderer. These kinds of events could be held in an old building in order to add a
spookier atmosphere.
After highlighting the different improvement’s key orientations attached to the
ghost tour in Chapter 1, Chapter 2 tried to present the main improvements to set
up in an operational perspective. It was also shown how to offer this ghost tour to
the public and how to build a complementary offer around it in order to get a
coherent global offer and various experiential products in.
Chapter 3. The perspectives in the future with a dark
tourism branch and assessment of the mission
Introduction
Having a ghost tour in a global offer is a strong point but if the company feels good
with this kind of product, why not go deeper and further by offering a range of
products into dark tourism? The opening of a new branch and subpart of Colour My
Travel dedicated to dark tourism is considered. Further in this chapter, we will also
do an assessment of the mission within Colour My Travel through this work
placement.
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3.1 Why a new branch dedicated to dark tourism and how to be
prepared to this new perspective?
3.1.1 The reasons of choosing dark tourism
3.1.1.1 An interesting type of tourism
In Part I, dark tourism was defined. Here we can add that ghost tourism is
attached to dark tourism but it is not always as evident. Mr. J, in his interview, (see
appendix L) argues that: “some people think that ghost tourism and dark tourism are
linked but others think the opposite”. People who think that ghost tourism is not part
of dark tourism do not consider the belief in ghosts to be real. Therefore, we can say
that ghost tourism could be considered as part of dark tourism but it is definitely on
the lightest part of the spectrum (see Part I, Chapter 3 for further information about
ghost and dark tourism).
With two different aspects (places with real and dramatic past events in one
side; and imagination and the belief in ghosts in the other side), it is definitely a plus
for Colour My Travel. Indeed, it could attract several types of targets: the ones who do
not believe in ghosts and are here to visit places attached to a dramatic past and the
other ones who believe in the paranormal and want to approach it.
Furthermore, dark tourism and ghost tourism are very trendy nowadays and
are niche and innovative markets which suit well to the company’s philosophy. We
also underline that no competitors in dark tourism are present in Malta. Therefore,
there is an opportunity in this market for Colour My Travel.
3.1.1.2 A coherent range of products
In the new branch dedicated to dark tourism, Colour My Travel could offer:
-
Proper dark tourism
-
Ghost tourism
-
Spooky tourism
The main products could be the following:
-
Ghost tours: Valletta, Mdina, Three Cities
-
Crime tours
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-
Torture and punishment tours; to attach to the torture museum in Mdina
-
War/memorial tours; to attach with the war museum and some cemeteries
-
Paranormal experience tour
-
Private events such as murder mystery nights
Before offering the products, the company can follow the following methodology:
1) List all the places or stories in Malta linked with Dark tourism
2) Select places and stories that can be used for Colour My Travel’s products
3) Categorise the places and stories by products (more attached to crimes, to
ghost, to memorial area or to torture etc)
4) Create a table with all the differents sources that we can exploit
5) Create sheets with the location of each story and then gather them together to
build itineraries
3.1.2 Prepare the human resources
Colour My Travel needs to hire qualified and maybe specialized people for dark
tourism as it is a special type of tourism which is often controversial and seen as
voyeurism sometimes. People who will work in this branch dedicated to dark tourism
must know what this area involves: the different pillars of this type of tourism, the
dimensions, the expectations from the tourists, etc. Dark tourism is quite fascinating
to study but we need to understand the psychological aspect from the tourists to turn
it into this special type of tourism. This type of tourism has very deep questions
regarding its practice.
In order to make the staff more sensitive and knowledgeable about dark tourism,
we suggest providing books and research materials for them to read and also make
themselves practice dark tourism before selling it. It is crucial to experience the
products before offering them.
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3.2 Work on the promotion and on the visibility
3.2.1 The promotion of the new branch
It is important to promote differently the new branch dedicated to dark tourism
from the other tours offered by Colour My Travel. This new branch of Colour My
Travel needs to have, for instance, its own name; some suggestions are below:
-
Darken My Travel
-
My Dark Travel
-
Malta Dark Travel
The company will also need a new logo like the following one:
Fig.27 Logo’s suggestion for the dark tourism branch
My Dark
Travel
Source: Charlène BRUNET
The purpose of this new logo is to decline the current logo to make the two
different universes very distinct (dark tourism in one side, the other themed tours on
the other side). In order to make easier the comparison, this is the current logo of
Colour My Travel:
Fig. 28 Current Colour My Travel’s logo
Source: Colour My Travel
114
In order to add experiential marketing in the promotion of dark tourism, the
company definitely needs to play with the customers’ emotions and senses. For
example, on the part dedicated to dark tourism in the website, people need to feel the
difference with the other tours sold by Colour My Travel. The part focused on dark
tourism needs to be very dark and include visual aspects and sounds for example.
3.2.2 Start building a network of dark tourism in Malta
As a niche market, dark tourism needs to be visible and we need to make people
aware of it. It is important and relevant to start building a network between dark
tourism providers. For this, we can involve:

Ghost tourism providers: ghost hunt teams, ghost tours companies, haunted
accommodations, etc.

Spooky tourism providers: scary museums (e.g. torture museums), crime
tours, etc.

Dark tourism providers: tours in Malta about death, suffer, disasters, etc.
This network could allow to:
a) Make the offer of dark tourism more visible and, of course, Colour My Travel’s
offer at the same time.
b) Make dark tourism more accessible to the tourists by highlighting and
promoting this kind of tourism.
c) Fight against the prejudices of dark tourism. Starting by changing the minds of
people about it: here it is more a sociological and psychological mission.
However, if tourism can help to change the mind it is important to enlarge the
missions of tourism. We cannot see tourism only as a business opportunity.
d) Gather the providers’ strengths: we can grow more if we are several because
of more people, more ideas, more opportunities, more volume, more
experience, more diversity, etc.
e) Start building packages for the tourists and combine the different offers.
115
3.3 Assessment of the mission and perspectives
3.3.1 Opinion of Colour My Travel’s director about the dark tourism’s
perspective
At the end of the internship’s period, it was interesting to have the feedback
from the director about his feelings concerning the dark tourism’s perspective and
the evolution of the current ghost tour. Therefore, a small questionnaire was
submitted to him. The questionnaire and his answers are the following:
116
Fig.29 Feedback from Colour My Travel’s director concerning the evolution of the ghost tour and the perspective in dark tourism
Topic
Question
Director’s answer
Can we say that Valletta Ghost
Tour is one of the key
products of Colour My Travel?
Why?
Yes, the Valletta Ghost Tour was the first product in dark tourism. The idea
behind launching this product was to measure the interest of our market in
dark tourism. It is also a social activity in itself where people get together
and meet new people through colour my travel. This is the main reason why
we also include a complementary drink in the offer.
What do you think of this Given that the current ghost tour was, in itself, a pilot, it is a dark tourism
current ghost tour?
product but it also has the other foot in the traditional story telling tours.
There is more that can be done to improve it. Nevertheless, we receive
different feedback about the current product. There are people who enjoy
the story telling and others who want a better taste of experience.
Ghost tour
Could some improvements be
done regarding this product?
If yes, in which area?
(marketing,
guide’s
performance, logistics, etc…)
The current marketing strategy for this tour is effective.
Further
improvements would be the introduction of a costume and also the
introduction of multimedia in the tour to induce further experience for our
guests to enjoy.
What do you think of the
different
ideas
and
suggestions from Charlène
Brunet regarding the ghost
tour’s improvement?
Her contribution was strong and effective. Through her methods and
evaluation techniques, Charlène identified weak points and strong points of
the tour. She helped us quantify the issues related to the tour and effectively
strategize to improve the entire product. I would say that she was key to the
actual improvements that will be implemented in the short term. There
were also other suggested changes that were implemented during her stay.
Do you plan to add some of Yes, definitely. We will continue improving the current Ghost Tour and also
117
these ideas and suggestions in introduce new products.
a near future to this ghost
tour?
What do you think of the It is very important and in line with our quality assurance policy. The
questionnaire about the ghost questions covered the important topics and helped our guests quantify their
tour? (quality of questions, feelings about the product.
topics…).
Ghost tour –
satisfaction
questionnaire
Do you think this kind Yes, because we believe that our guests must be at the centre of our product
questionnaire can help for a development and processes. Such tools enable people to participate in
product’s
improvement? making our products more fun.
Why?
What do you think of the They reflect our feelings about the product and explain further how it can be
different feedbacks/results of improved. I’m happy with every response we’ve had.
this questionnaire for the
moment?
Ghost tourism &
dark tourism –
Perspectives
How do you imagine the Definitely. I foresee that a substantial part of Colour my Travel will focus on
future of your tours involved Dark Tourism. We are currently in the final stages of launching 2 new
in ghost and dark tourism products.
area? Would you like to create
new products in this field?
In your opinion why ghost
tourism & dark tourism could
be
a
good
business
opportunity for Colour My
In Malta, there used to be only random or sporadic Ghost Tours. People did
not have the opportunity to try and frequent such products. With Colour my
Travel running regular ghost tours for the past 2 years, people got used to
them, could talk about them at work and other places and eventually join
118
Travel?
our tours. That’s why it is a good opportunity and we look forward to
launching new products.
With a focus on ghost and A variety. Our products proved to be a fun event for team building within
dark tourism in your future enterprise, casual outings for friends, couples and families, and also for
tours, which targets/kind of people who are specifically interested in ghost stories and the paranormal.
customers do you plan to
attract?
Source: Colour My Travel’s director
We can say that Colour My Travel’s director is rather happy about the improvement’s suggestions concerning the ghost tour and
he is directed towards the near future with the improvement of the other tours, the creation of new tours and the opening of a
new
branch
dedicated
to
119
dark
tourism.
3.3.2 Results of the mission
The proposal of a marketing strategy will be used by Colour My Travel for the
development of the company: extending the global offer and adding experiential
marketing. As for the ghost tour’s improvement, it will be used as a template for the
other tours and will be studied by Colour My Travel’s director and some changes will
be done soon.
If the internship’s period were longer, more interviews would have been done,
including local people and tourists. Moreover, we could have tried the main part of
tours’ improvements while I was there. It would have also been very interesting to
collect feedback from the customers after the improved tours. In this way, I could
have interviewed people who had already attended a previous tour and see the
difference of their perception between the latter and the new and improved tour.
Finally, starting to create the network between dark tourism providers would have
been very useful even if the procedure had already been started through the
collaboration with the ghost hunt team.
3.3.3 Personal assessment
This work placement was a really enriching experience. I learnt how an
excursion operator’s business runs and I was witness to the reality and the issues of
guided tours.
As for the skills, I learnt how to adapt a marketing strategy to the specific
issues of a company. I also gained experience in experiential marketing and in ghost
tourism. The most important thing was that this work placement confirmed to myself
that we cannot do anything related to strategy and product’s development if we are
not present on the ground and if we do not see the daily reality of the business.
Finally, this experience strengthened my wish to work further in the
experiential marketing area for a tourism organisation. Dark tourism is also a type of
tourism that is very interesting to me and I would like to go further into it and
understand the different questions attached to it.
120
Dark tourism can be a coherent continuity after the ghost tour’s improvement
because it could enlarge the offer and attract several types of targets. However,
since this type of tourism is quite special and controversial, the company as well as
the staff need to be prepared for the launch of this new branch. As for the
assessment of the mission, the marketing strategy, the ghost tour’s improvement
suggestion, and the dissertation will be used by Colour My Travel for further
business development.
121
CONCLUSION PART III
Part III was attached to, and focused on Colour My Travel’s ghost tour. This product
was studied as a template to improve it in an experiential marketing’s perspective.
Several sections dealt with improvements such as the guide’s performance, the tour’s
content, the itinerary, etc. By thinking of this tour’s improvement, the addition of
some similar products was also considered so as to extend the global offer. This
extension of the global offer in ghost tourism raised the question of the opening of a
new Colour My Travel’s branch dedicated entirely to dark tourism, which could be a
good opportunity for the company in a market without many competitors in Malta.
122
GENERAL CONCLUSION
Throughout this dissertation, we tried to answer the mission required by Colour My
Travel, which was the proposal of a marketing strategy suitable for the company. This
marketing strategy was based on innovation and integrated within it some key
orientations towards experiential marketing. The ghost tour was later studied as an
innovative product suitable for integrating experiential marketing within it. Several
suggestions of improvements were given in this perspective of experiential
marketing.
Here, we should note that the research problems were the following:
-
How can innovation and experiential marketing affect attractiveness, success,
and quality of an excursion tour operator?
-
How can we develop a quality business offer which is attractive and
successful using innovation and experiential marketing?
The hypotheses to answer these research problems were the following:
-
Innovation adds value to experiential marketing
-
The combination of innovation and experiential marketing attracts more
customers than traditional offers
-
The combination of innovation and experiential marketing generates more
value for a business
-
The combination of innovation and experiential marketing allows a business
to focus on quality rather than quantity
Here, we can argue that the combination of innovation and experiential marketing is
definitely a plus for a company because both have assets that the tourists are looking
and asking for. It is not easy to combine these two concepts but it is worth the trouble
in a business development of innovative tours. It is also coherent to use both
innovation and experiential marketing in a business development because they
present complementary key features that can be associated together.
123
The proposal of the marketing strategy and the present dissertation will both be used
by Colour My Travel in the near future in order to keep developing its business. The
mission of this internship can obviously be continued by improving other tours and
creating the new suggested tours. The possible extensions of the mission, if I had been
given more time to complete it, are mentioned in the Results of the mission, Chapter 3
of Part III. Also, the new branch dedicated to dark tourism will generate new issues
for the company that will need to be studied specifically and ideally by people
involved in this area.
In our world, new concepts emerge quickly and it is important to understand them
and benefit from them to grow and help a business evolve. This is the case of
experiential marketing and innovative niche markets such as ghost tourism. I really
enjoyed writing about these innovative concepts throughout this dissertation because
I think that the research can only progress, go further and deeper if we study new
concepts and unusual combinations of these concepts.
124
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128
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129
TABLE OF APPENDICES
APPENDIX A: MALTA’S MAP ................................................................................................................... 131
APPENDIX B. CUSTOMERS’ DATA SHEET ................................................................................................. 132
APPENDIX C: INTERWIEWS’ TABLE .......................................................................................................... 133
APPENDIX D : INTERVIEW’S STRUCTURE FOR THE GUIDES’ INTERVIEWS ................................................ 134
APPENDIX E : TRANSCRIPTION OF THE INTERVIEW FROM THE GUIDE X .................................................. 137
APPENDIX F : SUMMARIES OF THE OTHER GUIDES’ INTERVIEWS ............................................................ 146
APPENDIX G : INTERVIEW’S STRUCTURE FOR THE GHOST HUNT TEAM................................................... 150
APPENDIX H : SUMMARIES OF THE INTERVIEWS FROM THE GHOST HUNT TEAM ................................... 153
APPENDIX I : INTERVIEW’S STRUCTURE FOR THE GHOST TOUR’S CUSTOMERS ....................................... 156
APPENDIX J : SUMMARIES OF THE INTERVIEWS FROM THE GHOST TOUR’S CUSTOMERS ....................... 159
APPENDIX K : INTERVIEW’S STRUCTURE FOR THE DARK TOURISM EXPERT ............................................. 162
APPENDIX L : SUMMARY OF THE DARK TOURISM EXPERT’S INTERVIEW................................................. 165
130
Appendix A: Malta’s map
131
Appendix B. Customers’ data sheet
Date:
Guide:
Free Walking Tour – Market Research
Gender
Age (please indicate your age or your
Nationality (please
(please
age range)
indicate the country you
circle)
come from)
- 18 / 19 – 25 / 26 – 34 / 35 – 44 / 45
Accommodation
in How
did
you
hear
Malta (please give the about us?
type of accommodation, (please indicate if it is for
name of accommodation e.g.: social media, word
– 54 / 55 – 64 / + 65
(if
it
is
a
accommodation)
place/town)
paid of
mouth,
and institutions, thanks to
the
sign,
others…)
M/F
M/F
M/F
M/F
132
tourism
by
chance,
Appendix C: Interwiews’ table
Topic
Number of
Utility for the dissertation
interviewees
3 Valletta Ghost
Valletta Ghost Tour
Tour’s
attendants
These people have attended Valletta
Ghost Tour, it is interesting to have
their feedback about this tour in order
to improve it.
These guides have studied for 3 years
Licensed guides
4 Maltese
how to guide. They know how to adapt
guides
to an audience and how to perform
during a specific tour as a ghost tour.
This ghost hunt team is involved in
2 members of a
Ghost hunting
Maltese ghost
hunt team
ghost tourism. It is interesting to know
exactly the difference between the
ghost tour and the ghost hunt.
Furthermore, a potential collaboration
with them has been considered.
Ghost tourism is a subdivision of dark
Dark tourism expert
tourism. In this way it is important to
1
interview an expert of one of the main
topic of this dissertation.
Why not have opinions of people in
general? Tourists and residents can
People in general: tourists and
To do in the
share their ideas and opinions about
residents
future
ghost tourism and innovation. They
also can be potential and future
customers of Colour My Travel.
Language: English for all the interviews
Type of interviews: face to face and Skype
Nationalities of interviewees: most of them are Maltese
TOTAL of interviews: 10
133
Appendix D : Interview’s structure for the guides’ interviews
Done on the ……. /2015
Face to face interview
Language: English
The interviewee
Gender:
Job/Position:
Utility for the interview:
Nationality:
Hi, my name is Charlène. I am a Tourism Master’s student. For my Master’s
dissertation, I am studying experiential marketing and innovation in tourism with the
case of an excursion tour operator in Malta. As a study case I chose the ghost tour
product. As you already had attended a ghost tour, you must be an interesting person
for me to interview.
Before starting this interview, you need to know that this interview will be
completely anonymous and confidential.
For a better authenticity of your speech, do you mind if I record our conversation? It
will help me for the interview’s transcript. Then, the record will be deleted. As
regards practical information, the interview will last between 30 minutes and 1 hour,
it depends on you if you are talkative or no.
To conclude, please know that you can talk freely and do breaks in your answers.
Keep in mind, that your answers to my questions will be very enriching for my work
so don’t hesitate to talk, add information, give examples, express your views and
opinions.
If you are ready, let is start!
Legend:
In italic: speech follow-ups
I/ PERSONAL INFORMATIONS
-
-
So firstly, can you introduce you in some words please?
Where do you come from?
-
Where do you live currently? In Malta?
134
II/ TOURISM, INNOVATION, EXPERIENTIAL
-
Can you tell me what is innovation for you with your own words? What do you
think of when you hear the word innovation?
-
How can innovation be combined with tourism? Any examples?
-
In your opinion, what is an innovative guided tour?
-
Have you ever heard about experiential marketing? (quick explanation from
me)
-
As a tourist, living an experience through a tourism product’s consumption is
essential for you?
-
Are you looking for unusual experiences/products during your travels?
-
Do you like when your 5 senses and your emotions in general are stimulated
during a product’s consumption?
III / GHOST TOURISM
-
In your opinion what is ghost tourism ?
-
What do you think of paranormal in general?
-
Do you like being scared? Are you looking for scary experiences in your life?
-
Do you think ghost tourism is a type of tourism that we need to support the
development? Why?
III/ GHOST TOUR’S EXPERIENCE
-
Have you ever attended a ghost tour except the one in Valletta that we will
tackle later? If yes, tell me about it/them (where, when, your opinions?)
-
Do you rather like ghost tours in general? Why?
-
What does a ghost tour need to be a “good” ghost tour for you? (be a bit scary,
entertaining, historical…)
IV/ VALLETTA GHOST TOUR
-
What did you think of Valletta ghost tour?
-
What did you think of the guide’s performance?
135
-
What did you think of the tour’s contents? (stories told by the guide)
-
What did you think of the duration of the tour? (3 hours)
-
What do you think of having a break during this tour? In your opinion is it
essential? Why?
-
How can we improve our Valletta ghost tour in your opinion?
-
Do you think having a ghost tour for Malta destination is an asset for the
tourism offer? Why?
-
Would you recommend this tour to tourists? Also to Maltese people?
V/ PERSPECTIVES
-
Would like to attend our new ghost tour and see our improvements?
Do you have anything to add?
Thank you very much for your participation. It was really enriching.
Have a nice day.
136
Appendix E : Transcription of the interview from the guide x
Done on the 21/07 /2015
Face to face interview
Language: English
The interviewee: Mr. X
Gender: Male
Job/Position: Tourist guide in Malta
Utility for the interview: Involved in guided tours and thematic tours
Nationality: Maltese
Hi, my name is Charlène. I am a Tourism Master’s student. For my Master’s
dissertation, I am studying experiential marketing and innovation in tourism with the
case of an excursion tour operator in Malta. As a study case I chose the ghost tour
product. As you are a guide, you must be an interesting person for me to interview.
Before starting this interview, you need to know that this interview will be
completely anonymous and confidential.
For a better authenticity of your speech, do you mind if I record our conversation? It
will help me for the interview’s transcript. Then, the record will be deleted. As
regards practical information, the interview will last between 30 minutes and 1 hour,
it depends on you if you are talkative or no.
To conclude, please know that you can talk freely and do breaks in your answers.
Keep in mind, that your answers to my questions will be very enriching for my work
so don’t hesitate to talk, add information, give examples, express your views and
opinions.
If you are ready, let is start!
Legend:
Me, Charlène Brunet
Mr.X, the interviewee
Extracts seen as important
I/ PERSONAL INFORMATIONS
-
So firstly, can you introduce yourself in some words please?
137
Hello, my name is X, I am a licensed tour guide and I am interested in ghost stories
and military fortifications.
-
Hum ok, where do you come from?
I come from the village of Tarxien which is in the south of Malta.
-
And how long have you been guide?
About three and a half years.
-
Where have you been guided? I mean only in Malta or also abroad?
Hum I did Malta and Gozo.
-
What kind of tours have you ever conducted? Themed tours or special interest
tours?
I do specialized tours. Hum military fortifications.
-
And do you like these special interest tours? If yes, why?
Oh yes, yes… Cause my interest is in history as well. It is my focus if we can say.
-
So we can say that you prefer special interest tours to standard tours?
Exactly. Even the clients will be more interested, they will ask more questions and I
will you know… elaborate more.
-
And I guess it is a harder job to prepare a tour like this, a special interest tour?
Yes, indeed. But of course I like doing research so it is a good thing, in my opinion of
course.
-
Ok now we will talk about innovation and experiential marketing in tourism…
II/ TOURISM, INNOVATION, EXPERIENTIAL
-
Can you tell me what is innovation for you with your own words? What do you
think of when you hear the word innovation?
Innovation in my opinion is to invent something new… design something for the
clients or for research, think about it, design something new which is exciting.
138
-
Ok and how can innovation be combined with tourism? How can we put them
together? Any examples?
By designing new tours, by understanding the clients, understand who are the client,
what they like, what they don’t like and so on… and you can innovate new tours and
hum… and continue you know, further.
-
In your opinion, what is an innovative guided tour?
Hum… Oh yes. Actually…
-
What does a guided tour need to be innovative?
Hum… for example, re-enactment with tours, hands-zone, for example… if you are
explaining sword fighting, you can include handling of swords. They could fight with
the swords, of course safely. Safety is really important there. But you can for example,
if there is a ghost tour, you can get them you know… they can carry with them a
candle or you know that.
-
Ok so about the atmosphere…
Yes exactly. About the atmosphere and how you deliver the tour is very very
important.
-
Have you ever heard about experiential marketing?
Hum…
-
If no, it is ok
Hum, not really.
-
Ok so a quick explanation from me…
-
Basically it is about delivering an experience before a simple product to the
Ok.
tourists…
Oh ok.
-
And so we play with their feelings, emotions, sensations…
Ok you also use the senses?
139
-
Yes. So it is the experience beforehand. And as a guide, do you think living an
experience through a tourism product’s consumption is essential for the
tourists?
Yes, in my opinion cause for the tourists, for the clients, to experience you know, to
use emotions, they will remember the holidays and they will enjoy them better.
In fact, I travel myself you know, so hum… explore the places you know and give them
more interesting twist by using you know emotion and the senses of the clients.
They will remember and enjoy the tour and their holidays.
-
So yes, it is better for the memory.
Exactly.
-
And also, I think they will need to share this experience with their friends etc if
they have liked it.
Let us remember that we are doing tours for the clients. So the most important thing
is that the client will understand the history or the stories. Then they can share it with
other people. So, the experience will be good, you know, then we will enlarge the
market.
-
Ok, we will start now with another topic: Ghost tourism
Oh yeah!
III / GHOST TOURISM
-
So just with your own words again, in your opinion what is ghost tourism?
Because we don’t have an official definition yet.
Yes, indeed. Hum, ghost tourism is to give an experience to the customers, they could
be tourists, they could be locals. Give them an experience of the stories, the
interpretation of the stories. So, hum, they need to understand fear, they need to
understand what happened and we need to give them a sense of mystery through it. If
you give them a sense of mystery, automatically they will be more interested,
they want to know more.
-
Make them curious.
Exactly. The market for ghost tourism is now bigger especially because of the internet
and ghost products we can say.
140
-
In your opinion, why people are more and more interested and demanding
with this type of tourism?
Because it is something new. Once again, innovation, something new. Hum in Malta it
is very new but it started in Europe since a long time and it stopped for a while and it
started again. Even the idea you know of having television programmes visiting
haunted houses etc, it attracts interest of people for one simple reason: mysterious,
mystery. So automatically, then you have more people cause it is mysterious.
-
Ok, what do you think of paranormal in general?
Actually, I do not believe that much in ghosts…
-
You are not curious about it? It is not something fascinating for you?
It is fascinating. In fact, I like reading ghost stories, I like emotion of fear, I like to see
ghost movies and the macabre. It is very interesting for me. But I have to say I do not
believe in ghosts.
-
About fear, do you like being scared? Are you looking for scary experiences in
your life? Being stimulated with fear?
Hum, yeah. I like scary things you know but I can understand that most probably you
are not going to see anything. So if you believe in ghosts, you will probably see
one but it is also psychological and it is my personal opinion. But I like the idea you
know of adrenaline, sword fighting for my case.
-
Hum ok, do you think ghost tourism is a type of tourism that we need to
support the development? And why?
Hum yes exactly. Hum first of all, you attract different people. For example, in a
normal tour, you find people interested in history and culture of Malta. In ghost
tourism, you find the same people but you find other people who are younger and
who like the idea you know, of macabre. So you can attract, you can give history to
people that are less interested and you can balance. Because, hum I have noticed even
when I have been abroad that in normal tours you get a certain age, in ghost tourism
you find of all them, from young till very old; that attracts more people cause it is
mysterious. So mystery, we can use mystery to sell you know. It attracts people and
everything. I mean that is the reason why we have science: to understand. Cause
lightning for example was a mystery so that attracts attention.
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-
Ok. So ghost tourism can be an opportunity to develop tourism in a
destination?
Exactly. In fact, we can say that everywhere around the way, we can find ghost
stories. And even if the nation is young, for example the United States, they are
concentrate on ghost tourism especially in Connecticut, what we call New England. It
is the oldest part of the United States we can say and they have a lot of ghost tours
there. So we can bring cultures together in the same thing cause you find ghost stories
from Europe, African ghost stories… it can attract more people in this way.
-
Thank you. So now about ghost tour, we focus on the ghost tour.
III/ GHOST TOUR’S EXPERIENCE
-
Have you ever attended a ghost tour as a tourist?
Yes.
-
Tell me where it was, if you liked it etc.
I’ve been to Edinburgh, Edinburgh vaults which is a very interesting ghost tour.
Actually, they manage to target different ages as I mentioned and it was quite nice.
-
Do you rather like ghost tours in general? Why?
Yes. Hum, of course as I like history and I am quite interested in stories. Also, as I
mentioned I like the idea of the macabre, mysterious activities. Yes I do not believe in
ghosts but I like being frightened. It is, hum, how can I say, a human thing! Everyone
gets frightened.
-
What does a ghost tour need to be a “good” ghost tour for you? I mean a bit
scary, entertaining, historical…?
Hum… I have a list of that. First of all, you need to do research, understand the
stories cause you will have a lot of interpretation about ghosts you know. Of course
some stories will be changed, different from the others. So you need to have a good
research background. Even consider that many tourists do their own research. So you
need to make sure that your stories are right. Then, you can use emotion, your face
expression, your tone of voice, how to deliver stories, and you have to make
them believe that you believe it. If you do not believe in the stories, unconsciously
you will not deliver the stories right. Then you can ask “you do not believe in ghosts,
so you cannot deliver a good ghost tour…”. Hum well, in fact in this 1hour,
30minutes or what else I believe in the stories. So psychologically, I am preparing
myself to deliver the stories correctly. And if you see it works you see the clients
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checking each corner and behind their back, taking photos trying to get some
floating orbs or what else then you know that is successful.
-
Hum, we will talk a bit later about the guide’s performance. So you, have you
ever conducted a ghost tour?
Yes.
-
Do you like conducting ghost tours? Why?
Oh yes! Of course, I like historical accuracy a lot. So of course the ghost stories will not
be historically accurate. But it is a story nonetheless, a mysterious story. So I like
delivering such stories as well. And I think it is what the clients want: get frightened,
know the mysteries of a place.
-
Hum, in your opinion, what are people’s motivations in attending a ghost tour?
Once again, something new. It is something different. It’s not a normal tour so it
attracts people. It is at night to add the mystery and during the evening. And… as I
mentioned, many people like the emotion, be frightened, that’s why we see horror
movies at the end of the day.
-
So I come back to the guide performance. You already talked to me a little bit
about it but if you can sum up: what are the assets for a guide doing a ghost
tour? Talk about his behaviour, his attitude... the key characteristics of a good
guide during a ghost tour.
Hum well… I think it is the same characteristics of any tour. As I mentioned, research
are very very important, your expression, how to deliver… but in the case of the
ghost tour, you have to pay attention and be more serious, more deep you know, to
attract attention in a scale way we can say. You don’t have to be weird or crazy but
you have to pay attention about your emotions: your tone of voice, your gestures
are very important especially during a ghost tour.
-
So do you think the guide can plays a role as an actor? He/she can be a
different person during the tour?
Yes, actually I think it will be a good idea. I have conduced tours where for example, I
wore a cape and an armour. And with this you attract more attention because you
are wearing the clothes, the armour of the period. Especially for a ghost tour, people,
will be in the atmosphere of the ghost tour.
143
-
I noticed that ghost tours are more and more common, usual in capital cities
around the world, in your opinion how can we keep the innovative side of a
ghost tour and still offer unusual to tourists?
Oh yes! First of all, for example, I’ve been to Madrid, Toledo, Segovia, Poland, Craco,
I’ve been to Edinburgh and I always attend tours there, ghost tours and normal tours
and what I didn’t see is re-enactment. For example, in every city you will have
stories of a fight, of a combat. Actually if you can do a re-enactment and interpret
sort of fights, what really happened… of course you cannot kill the persons of course.
But you can get close to the emotions cause you have to use all the senses and not
every tours use the senses. Mainly the common and quite obvious one is hearing:
hearing the stories. But, if someone was shot here and he keeps haunting the street, of
course with the permission of the police, we do a blind shot behind the tourists, or
have a sword fighting’s interpretation, or you have, you know, screaming or you know
play an organ, recorded things, you can do this.
-
So we need to focus on the senses…
Exactly, all the senses. For example, hum…, I’ve been to Edinburgh castle and there
was someone explaining about an incident there and actually we could smell the gun
burn powder, the smell of sulphur, that helps a lot cause you will understand the
story more. It could be a ghost tour or it could be another tour but especially for a
ghost tour, you can get more interest and you’re using vision, you can’t see the
ghosts it’s quite obvious, but you are using interpretation, there is hearing,
there is smelling…
-
You can imagine them…
Exactly.
-
The last part is about ghost tourism but in Malta.
IV/ VALLETTA GHOST TOURISM
-
Do you think having a ghost tour in Malta is an asset for the tourism offer?
Why?
Oh yes. As I mentioned before, ghost tourism in Malta is very rare. Actually, it is an
innovative thing that has just started. The idea of ghost tourism in Malta is something
new.
So, we have a lot of sights, hum not only in Valletta, all over the country: in Gozo, in
Vittoriosa, in Mdina, the old cities… but in Valletta, there are quite interesting ghost
stories and you can relate to other cities as well depends on where the foreigners
144
come from. And, as well, if you can manage to have a proper ghost tour in Malta, in
Valletta sorry, I mean it can last for hours cause of this amount of stories we have. So
hum… it will be quite interesting.
-
What do you think of a network about ghost tourism in Malta? I mean a
network between ghost tourism providers. I had this idea to put together all
the actors of ghost or spooky tourism. And what could be the benefits of this
type of network? For the tourism offer, for the tourists, for the ghost tourism
providers?
Oh yes, hum… actually you can build an entire company of all this. It is in demand.
We have a lot of tourists coming from all over the world. As you mentioned, all the
capital cities have their own ghost tours, so they expect even in Valletta and they ask
for it. That’s why when I started guiding, everyone, I mean clients from where I was
working, were asking me “do you have ghost tours? And why not?”. But yes you can
combine all the forces we can say, together: of guides, of ghost hunters, of reenactors if you like, and you can manage to offer the tourists a very good product
and it could be quite a good value for the money and you can offer an
experience, that is the main thing, it is why we are here, to give the visitors an
experience. And actually, if you combine all the forces, you have different
expertise in different fields regarding ghosts so that will help a lot.
V/ PERSPECTIVES
-
Last question: would like to attend our new ghost tour and see our
improvements in the future?
Oh yes, definitely. Even if I would like to help out and I would attend also.
-
So I have finished with my questions, if you have anything to add do not
hesitate?
It is ok. Thank you very much. Thank you. Merci beaucoup.
-
Thank you very much to you for your participation. It was really enriching.
Have a nice day.
145
Appendix F : Summaries of the other guides’ interviews
Ms. J
Maltese tourist guide
According to Mrs. J, innovation is something, creative and surprising. Innovation in
tourism can be illustrated with themed tours or unusual types of accommodation. An
innovative tour is an experience and includes different elements such as effects
(technology, sounds, audio-visual experience). Regarding experiential marketing, its aim is
to form a memorable and emotional association between the consumer and the
brand. Memorable experiences help to promote a destination on social media or to
tourists’ relatives.
Regarding the ghost tour, the guide describes it by the following: “a ghost tour is a tour led
by a guide who tells stories about ghosts, legends and also narrates the history of the
areas, thus giving a context to the stories. Such tours are done on foot, normally walking
form a haunted location to another. Guides normally wear period costumes, scare
make-up or their company uniforms”. The ghost tour needs to deliver correct
historical information and the context should be presented to the participants. I expect it
to be fun and entertaining. Yet, it should also a bit scaring, surprising the guests with
unexpected stories or endings.
Ms. J thinks that ghost tourism needs to be supported more because it can attract people
who are not really into history but want to experience something fun and different.
As for the guide, he must be keen on the subject and knowledgeable about it as well. He
146
need to read a lot of stories and do proper research to carry out a ghost tour. He should
believe in paranormal activity. He should also be ready to experiment new things, such
as taking guests to haunted places and ready to do more research on the subject.
To keep the innovative side of the ghost tour, Ms. J suggests to organise the tours around
one particular place, such as a haunted place or house (not only in the centres of big
cities).
A network between ghost tourism providers would be ideal. Joining forces would result
to a better package. Joining strengths help to develop a better package. Probably more
people will get to know about the tours.
Mr. P
Maltese tourist guide
At the end of the interview and as a conclusion, Ms. J suggests to focus more on the
experience rather than narrating stories and details and thinks that it would also be a
good idea to include site visit during the tour.
According to Mr. P, innovation is something new not yet experienced by the people. In
tourism, it can be illustrated by technology or the way people are dressed and
presented (case of a guide during a tour).
In this guide’s opinion, ghost tourism include stories related to hauntings and
paranormal but also as a tourist he would expect himself to be scared. This type of
tourism needs to be developed and supported because it is another part of history with
the ghost stories which is a part of our past. Furthermore, some people are very interested
in this field because it is different from the normal existing products. Malta has a potential
for this type of tourism because of its rich history.
According to the interviewee, a good ghost tour needs to have good ghost stories, and a
147
scary element in. The locations needs also to be planned carefully (not only in open
spaces, not only a street). Sounds and costumes are also important for a ghost tour.
As for the ghost tour’s attendants, the interviewee thinks that, first of all, they are looking
for a different tour from the standard ones. Usually, they want also to be scared,
especially when they are part of a group.
Mr. P thinks that a ghost tour’s guide needs obviously to know the stories, then the
delivery must be different from normal tours. It is not only about talking and storytelling.
The guide needs to build suspense and involve the attendants (for e.g. saying “”guess
what happens next?”). The way the guide is dressed is also very important.
In order to keep innovative a ghost tour, the choice of the locations is important, e.g. in
shelters or underground. The guide suggests also to bring people to Prehistoric sites
(rich and old heritage in Malta) because at this time people used to buried dead people in
these sites, in tombs. Therefore, visitors could see bones for example.
Mr. M
Maltese tourist guide
Crimes, punishments, and sins linked to ghost tourism would be great to develop a
network about dark tourism. The benefits of this kind of network would be to attract
more people, offering more tours and favour the experience. It can also be good for the
organisations involved in because they can promote better the offer, make more
contacts etc.
As for innovation, Mr. M thinks that it is something new that has not been tried before.
In tourism, innovation can be illustrated with the use of technology, unusual modes of
transport and new types of tours (dark tourism, countryside/adventure tours, etc.).
The interviewee argues that the tourists can get a tourist guidebook or research their
trip before going on holiday and visit sites on their own. What people are looking for
148
is something they cannot create on their own: an experience.
According to Mr. M, ghost tourism is about tours and attractions that are related to
paranormal stories and which are attractive to people who are interested in the
paranormal and/or who get excitement from being scared. Ghost tourism needs to be
developed because the products in this type of tourism are very popular and the market is
growing.
As for the ghost tour, it is the occasion to see a place in a completely different way; for
example at night when it is dark and much quieter. The interviewee thinks that a ghost
tour is entertaining beforehand. However, it needs to have a historical background
(without too much details), especially to set the scene and make the stories more
believable and real. Mr. M adds that the ghost tour attracts a whole variety of people,
young and old, male and female. Regarding attendants’ motivations, he argues that most
of the attendants are believers, or are at least interested in the subject of the
paranormal. There are also the people who want to have fun and be entertained, and
maybe a little bit scared. Curiosity is also a big factor. In order to keep innovative a
ghost tour, it is suggested to use some special effects to create a more immersive
experience (eg. holograms) or technology (eg. ghost hunting equipment).
149
Appendix G : Interview’s structure for the ghost hunt team
Done on the ……. /2015
Face to face interview
Language: English
The interviewee
Gender:
Job/Position:
Utility for the interview:
Nationality:
Hi, my name is Charlène. I am a Tourism Master’s student. For my Master’s
dissertation, I am studying experiential marketing and innovation in tourism with the
case of an excursion tour operator in Malta. As a study case I chose the ghost tour
product. As you are part of a ghost hunt team, you must be an interesting person for
me to interview.
Before starting this interview, you need to know that this interview will be
completely anonymous and confidential.
To conclude, please know that you can talk freely and do breaks in your answers.
Keep in mind, that your answers to my questions will be very enriching for my work
so don’t hesitate to talk, add information, give examples, express your views and
opinions.
If you are ready, let is start!
Legend:
In italic: speech follow-ups
I/ PERSONAL INFORMATIONS
-
-
So firstly, can you introduce you in some words please?
Where do you come from?
-
What is your position in the ghost hunt team?
-
Can you describe your position? What do you do exactly? Your main tasks
-
What did you choose to be part of a ghost hunt team?
150
-
How long have you been part of this team?
II/ GHOST HUNT
-
Can you explain what a ghost hunt is?
-
What do you like the most in doing ghost hunts? What is the most interesting
for you in this activity of ghost hunting?
-
In your opinion, what are people’s motivations in attending to a ghost hunt?
-
Do you like open your ghost hunts to the public? Why?
II/ TOURISM, INNOVATION, EXPERIENTIAL
-
Can you tell me what is innovation for you with your own words? What do you
think of when you hear the word innovation?
-
How can innovation be combined with tourism? Any examples?
-
In your opinion, what is an innovative guided tour?
-
Have you ever heard about experiential marketing? (quick explanation from
me: experiential is about providing an experience, favour the tourists memories
of this experience, stimulate feelings, sensations, emotions during the product’s
consumption)
-
Do you think a ghost hunt can be an experiential tourism product? Why? (an
experiential product provides beforehand an experience to the tourist, it goes
beyond the simple attributes of a product)
III / GHOST TOURISM
-
In your opinion what is ghost tourism?
-
What do you think of paranormal in general?
-
Do you like being scared? Are you looking for scary experiences in your life?
-
Do you think ghost tourism is a type of tourism that we need to support the
development? Why?
III/ GHOST TOUR’S EXPERIENCE
-
Have you ever attended a ghost tour? If yes, tell me about it/them (where,
when, your opinions?)
151
-
Can you explain me the difference according to you, between a ghost hunt and
a ghost tour?
-
Do you rather like ghost tours in general? Why?
-
What does a ghost tour need to be a “good” ghost tour for you? (be a bit scary,
entertaining, historical…)
IV/ GHOST TOURISM IN MALTA
-
Have ever attended Valletta ghost tour? If yes, what did you think of it?
-
If no, would you like to attend this tour?
-
What do you think of a network of ghost tourism in Malta? (between ghost
tourism providers in Malta);
-
What could be the benefits of a network of this type? (for Malta tourism offer,
for the tourists, for the ghost tourism providers…)
-
Would you like to have a collaboration between our company (Colour My
Travel offers among its tours a ghost tour) and your team? Why? Any idea
about this collaboration?
V/ PERSPECTIVES
-
Would you like to attend our new ghost tour and see our improvements?
-
Do you have anything to add?
Thank you very much for your participation. It was really enriching.
Have a nice day.
152
Appendix H : Summaries of the interviews from the ghost hunt team
Mr. D
Ghost hunt team president
Mr. D is passionate about paranormal. He thinks that the main
motivation in attending a ghost hunt is to learn how to investigate
in a neutral unbiased way; people want also to use the different
technological gadget such as EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomena).
Sometimes the ghost hunt team opens the events to the public, it is
good to show what a ghost hunt is to the non-believers people for
example.
As regards innovation, the interviewee argues that it is a new
fresh idea or an invention into a good way. Mr. D is convinced
that a ghost hunt is a product using experiential marketing
because it delivers adventures by discovering historical and
abandoned haunted places.
Ghost tourism needs to be supported because it supports culture
and help renewing tourism market. Regarding the differences
between a ghost hunt and a ghost tour, the interviewee argues that
a ghost hunt is composed of investigators trying to make research
and contact with any evidence spirits. On the other hand, a ghost
tour is a tour through places related to historical stories or legends
regarding ghosts and mysteries.
153
Mr. D suggests to match both the ghost tour and the ghost hunt
because they can be attached and it can be a more exciting product,
then why not end with a dinner.
Finally, Mr. D thinks that a network between ghost tourism
providers is a good idea since it could favour the sharing of ideas,
video clips etc… and also just to discuss about paranormal and
to do research together.
Mr. Ma
Ghost hunt team secretary
According to Mr. Ma, a ghost hunt is an investigation of a haunted
place. During this investigation, people are trying to find evidence
of a presence/a spirit.
Ghost tourism attracts people interested in the field of
apparitions of ghosts in particular places. The interviewee
thinks that ghost tourism needs to be supported since people are
interested in apparitions of the Madonna, UFO and monstrous
apparitions as Loch Ness monster as well as ghosts and mysteries
in general. If a myth is born it will create a concern and people
will like to visit definitely if it will be of a great interest.
According to Mr. Ma, the main difference between a ghost hunt and
a ghost tour is that a hunt involves an investigation while a tour
involves an interest in a myth.
A network between ghost tourism providers could bring some
benefits such as an improvement of the experiences offers and an
154
increase of ideas.
155
Appendix I : Interview’s structure for the ghost tour’s
customers
Done on the ……. /2015
Face to face interview
Language: English
The interviewee
Gender:
Job/Position:
Utility for the interview:
Nationality:
Hi, my name is Charlène. I am a Tourism Master’s student. For my Master’s
dissertation, I am studying experiential marketing and innovation in tourism with the
case of an excursion tour operator in Malta. As a study case I chose the ghost tour
product. As you already had attended a ghost tour, you must be an interesting person
for me to interview.
Before starting this interview, you need to know that this interview will be
completely anonymous and confidential.
For a better authenticity of your speech, do you mind if I record our conversation? It
will help me for the interview’s transcript. Then, the record will be deleted. As
regards practical information, the interview will last between 30 minutes and 1 hour,
it depends on you if you are talkative or no.
To conclude, please know that you can talk freely and do breaks in your answers.
Keep in mind, that your answers to my questions will be very enriching for my work
so don’t hesitate to talk, add information, give examples, express your views and
opinions.
If you are ready, let is start!
Legend:
In italic: speech follow-ups
I/ PERSONAL INFORMATIONS
-
-
So firstly, can you introduce you in some words please?
Where do you come from?
156
-
Where do you live currently? In Malta?
II/ TOURISM, INNOVATION, EXPERIENTIAL
-
Can you tell me what is innovation for you with your own words? What do you
think of when you hear the word innovation?
-
How can innovation be combined with tourism? Any examples?
-
In your opinion, what is an innovative guided tour?
-
Have you ever heard about experiential marketing? (quick explanation from
me)
-
As a tourist, living an experience through a tourism product’s consumption is
essential for you?
-
Are you looking for unusual experiences/products during your travels?
-
Do you like when your 5 senses and your emotions in general are stimulated
during a product’s consumption?
III / GHOST TOURISM
-
In your opinion what is ghost tourism ? How can you define it in your own
words
-
What do you think of paranormal in general?
-
Do you like being scared? Are you looking for scary experiences in your life?
-
Do you think ghost tourism is a type of tourism that we need to support the
development? Why?
III/ GHOST TOUR’S EXPERIENCE
-
Have you ever attended a ghost tour except the one in Valletta that we will
tackle later? If yes, tell me about it/them (where, when, your opinions?)
-
Do you rather like ghost tours in general? Why?
-
What does a ghost tour need to be a “good” ghost tour for you? (be a bit scary,
entertaining, historical…)
157
IV/ VALLETTA GHOST TOUR
-
What did you think of Valletta ghost tour?
-
What did you think of the guide’s performance?
-
What did you think of the tour’s contents? (stories told by the guide)
-
What did you think of the duration of the tour? (2hours)
-
What do you think of having a break during this tour? In your opinion is it
essential? Why?
-
How can we improve our Valletta ghost tour in your opinion?
-
Do you think having a ghost tour for Malta destination is an asset for the
tourism offer? Why?
-
Would you recommend this tour to tourists? Also to Maltese people?
V/ PERSPECTIVES
-
Would like to attend our new ghost tour and see our improvements?
Do you have anything to add?
Thank you very much for your participation. It was really enriching.
Have a nice day.
158
Appendix J : Summaries of the interviews from the ghost tour’s customers
Couple X
Maltese residents
Both, the lady and the man are really interested and curious about
paranormal and unexplained phenoma. They read a lot books and
watch TV shows about paranormal.
Valletta Ghost Tour was not the first ghost tour this couple has
attended in the past. They have already attended a ghost tour in
Valletta and another one in Vittoriosa, both in Malta, never abroad.
The interviewees mentioned that Valletta, Mdina and Vittoriosa are
the best place to lead a ghost tour. By the way, they do not forget to
say that Mdina and Vittoriosa are the oldest cities in Malta.
I asked them about which countries do you think of when I say the
world paranormal, their answer was: England, Italy and Romania.
As regards Valletta ghost tour, they really enjoyed it. The guide sticks
the stories to history (draw the context of the past times) and does
not exaggerate according to the couple. Therefore, the guides leads the
tour in a realistic way and explains the stories in a fully way with
some historical highlights. The interviewees said that they could
imagine the past time thanks to the details mentioned by the guide.
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Ms. Mel
Maltese resident
The couple suggested some recommendations for this ghost tour such
as adding characters (extra people in costume) and holding the tour
later to have a darker and quieter atmosphere.
According to this client, innovation means something new and out of
the ordinary. An innovative tour could be a tour in which there is a
content not usually present in the normal tours. Every normal tour
will cover the same basic material (e.g. history) so to be innovative it is
necessary to add some stories or details which are not found in the
history books.
As for ghost tourism, the interviewee argues that it is when there are
places which are said to be haunted or have been in the past and
tourists are informed about them while in the city.
This client enjoyed Valletta ghost tour. In order to improve the
product, she suggests to place actors near some houses or in the
streets to make the stories more real and some could even be hidden
to fright the tourists.
Ms. K
British resident
Finally, the interviewee thinks that Valletta ghost tour is an asset for
the destination since the tourists are demanding of tours and
products out of the ordinary.
The interviewee is a writer and has already worked in the video games
industry. She is from United Kingdom but lives in Malta.
For her, innovation is doing different things, things that make
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experiences more functional, by using new challenges or new
opportunities. It can be anything from creating untried and untested
things. In tourism, the interviewee quotes the mystery dinners and
the redesign of literature during these events. It is a new and
innovative way to captive an audience. An innovative guided tour is
interactive, we can use apps, sounds.
According to Ms. K, ghost tourism is an experience that connects fear
and curiosity emotions with a building, a landmark. Life can be
very boring so people are looking fear emotions to feel alive,
something new.
The lady has already attended ghost tours in her country, England
such as tours in Nottingham. She likes ghost tours in general and a
good ghost tour for her is when the guide is very experienced in
telling stories. The guide needs to really believe what he is telling and
be passionate.
About Valletta ghost tour, the interviewee enjoyed it. She thinks that
the guide is knowledgeable and passionate. About the content, it is
engaging because they are historical stories but also contemporary
ones. She thinks that the tour is a great value for money (2hours + a
break and a complimentary drink).
To improve the tour, Ms. K suggests to go inside of the buildings to
see the decoration and feel the atmosphere. Also, why not playing
music from the past time.
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Appendix K : Interview’s structure for the dark tourism expert
Done on the ……. /2015
Face to face interview
Language: English
The interviewee
Gender:
Job/Position:
Utility for the interview:
Nationality:
Hi, my name is Charlène. I am a Tourism Master’s student. For my Master’s
dissertation, I am studying experiential marketing and innovation in tourism with the
case of an excursion tour operator in Malta. As a study case I chose the ghost tour
product. As you are writing a thesis about dark tourism, you must be an interesting
person for me to interview.
Before starting this interview, you need to know that this interview will be
completely anonymous and confidential.
For a better authenticity of your speech, do you mind if I record our conversation? It
will help me for the interview’s transcript. Then, the record will be deleted. As
regards practical information, the interview will last between 30 minutes and 1 hour,
it depends on you if you are talkative or no.
To conclude, please know that you can talk freely and do breaks in your answers.
Keep in mind, that your answers to my questions will be very enriching for my work
so don’t hesitate to talk, add information, give examples, express your views and
opinions.
If you are ready, let is start!
Legend:
In italic: speech follow-ups
I/ PERSONAL INFORMATIONS
-
-
So firstly, can you introduce you in some words please?
Where do you come from?
-
Where do you live currently? In Malta?
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-
Can you talk me a little bit about your current thesis? What is about?
-
Is it your first work about dark tourism or have you been involved in this topic
before also? In the case, it is not your first work about the topic, what else have
you done/written?
II/ TOURISM, INNOVATION, EXPERIENTIAL
-
Can you tell me what is innovation for you with your own words? What do you
think of when you hear the word innovation?
-
How can innovation be combined with tourism? Any examples?
-
In your opinion, what is an innovative guided tour?
-
Have you ever heard about experiential marketing? (quick explanation from
me: deliver an experience before a simple product, play on affect, emotions,
sensations, senses…, favour a remembrance of the experience)
III / DARK TOURISM and GHOST TOURISM
-
Can you explain me what is dark tourism?
-
What is the link between dark tourism and ghost tourism?
-
Can you define in your own words what is ghost tourism for you?
-
What do you think of paranormal in general?
-
Do you like being scared? Are you looking for scary experiences in your life?
-
Do you think ghost tourism is a type of tourism that we need to support the
development? Why?
-
Do you think Malta could be a good destination to develop dark tourism
(including ghost tourism)? Why?
-
If we think of dark tourism, innovation and experiential marketing together,
do you think it is a good and relevant relation between these 3 concepts? Why?
In other words do you think we can use dark tourism to develop innovative
products and deliver an unusual experience based on emotions and senses to the
tourists? Why?
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III/ GHOST TOUR’S EXPERIENCE
-
Have you ever attended a ghost tour except the one in Valletta that we will
tackle later? If yes, tell me about it/them (where, when, your opinions?)
-
Do you rather like ghost tours in general? Why?
-
What does a ghost tour need to be a “good” ghost tour for you? (be a bit scary,
entertaining, historical…)
-
Do you think having a ghost tour for Malta destination is an asset for the
tourism offer? Why?
IV/ VALLETTA GHOST TOUR (optional, just if you have already attended our
ghost tour)
-
What did you think of Valletta ghost tour?
-
What did you think of the guide’s performance?
-
What did you think of the tour’s contents? (stories told by the guide)
-
What did you think of the duration of the tour? (2hours)
-
What do you think of having a break during this tour? In your opinion is it
essential? Why?
-
How can we improve our Valletta ghost tour in your opinion?
-
Would you recommend this tour to tourists? Also to Maltese people?
V/ PERSPECTIVES
-
Would like to attend our new ghost tour and see our improvements?
-
Do you have anything to add (about any topic relative to this interview)?
Thank you very much for your participation. It was really enriching.
Have a nice day.
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Appendix L : Summary of the dark tourism expert’s Interview
Mr. J is an expert of dark tourism since he is doing a PhD and his thesis about this type
of tourism.
According to him, innovation is when you manage to do something new, you create
something that either doesn’t exist or you give a new perspective to something
that already exists with a new idea. An innovative guided tour is one that either
offers an experience or offers a new approach. It could be both.
As regards, dark tourism, the interviewee defines it by travelling to sites related to
Death, suffering or the seemingly macabre. Mr. J argues that some people think that
ghost tourism and dark tourism are linked but others think the opposite. The
problem is that unlike for example tours to places like Auschwitz or Alcatraz,
which really existed, ghost tourism is more of something bore out of
imagination or belief in ghosts, which not everyone would accept as real.
Therefore, in the interviewee’s opinion, ghost tourism can be part of dark
tourism but it would be on the lightest part of the spectrum.
According to Mr. J, ghost tourism is the travel to sites which are supposed to have a
ghost presence in them. This type of tourism needs to be supported since it is quite
popular and thus it is profitable.
Malta is a good destination to develop dark tourism (included ghost tourism)
because it is a small island with a lot of potential places to market as Dark. Its size
and number of dark places would make it very easy to market it as an ideal
experiential destination for Dark tourists. However, activities and sites need to be
coordinated, not everyone doing his own thing without a common strategic plan.
As for the ghost tour, Mr. J thinks that it needs to be spooky as possible and
animated. He already attended Valletta ghost tour and enjoyed it. However, he thinks
that the guide needs to be less clinical in his approach and more experiential, the
tours needs to make people feel more than just get informed.
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TABLE OF FIGURES
FIG.1 METHODOLOGICAL SCHEME .............................................................................................................. 8
FIG.2 THE GUIDED TOUR’S STRUCTURE ..................................................................................................... 16
FIG.3 NUMBER OF TOURIST ARRIVALS IN MALTA FROM 2010 TO 2014 .................................................... 22
FIG.4 INNOVATION INVOLVED IN TOURISM .............................................................................................. 27
FIG.5 THE EXPERIENTIAL WHEEL ............................................................................................................... 29
FIG.6 THE FOUR STAGES IN THE EXPERIENCE’S CONSUMPTION ................................................................ 30
FIG.7 SENSORY PROGRESS AND THEORY OF PROXEMICS .......................................................................... 32
FIG.8 THE PLACE OF GHOST TOURISM IN TOURISM MARKET .................................................................... 39
FIG.9 GHOST TOURISM’S REPRESENTATION ............................................................................................. 41
FIG.10 WHY ARE PEOPLE LOOKING FOR FEAR? ......................................................................................... 45
FIG.11 EXPERIENTIAL MARKETING WHEEL AND GHOST TOURISM ............................................................ 47
FIG.12 INTERNAL AUDIT OF COLOUR MY TRAVEL ..................................................................................... 54
FIG.13 CURRENT OFFER OF COLOUR MY TRAVEL ...................................................................................... 57
FIG.14 THE DIFFERENT MISSIONS AND TASKS AT COLOUR MY TRAVEL ..................................................... 61
FIG.15 COVER PAGE OF THE POWER POINT PRESENTATION ..................................................................... 63
FIG.16 METHOD FOR A GOOD COMPETITIVE INTELLIGENCE ..................................................................... 65
FIG.17 MARKET RESEARCH’S METHODOLOGY .......................................................................................... 67
FIG.18 THE POSITION OF COLOUR MY TRAVEL INTO THE TOURISM MARKET ............................................ 68
FIG.19 COLOUR MY TRAVEL’S POSITIONING ............................................................................................. 69
FIG.20 GUIDE’S QUALITY PROCEDURE FOR EACH TOUR ............................................................................ 73
FIG.21 THE THREE SIGNS USED DURING THE TOURS ................................................................................. 82
FIG.22 SUBPARTS OF THE SATISFACTION QUESTIONNAIRE ....................................................................... 93
FIG.23 GHOST TOUR AND EXPERIENTIAL MARKETING ............................................................................ 100
FIG.24 GHOST TOUR AND SENSES’ STIMULATION ................................................................................... 102
FIG.25 ACTION SHEET FOR MORE EFFECTS DURING THE TOUR ............................................................... 106
FIG.26 ACTION SHEET TO IMPROVE THE GUIDE’S PERFORMANCE .......................................................... 108
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FIG.27 LOGO’S SUGGESTION FOR THE DARK TOURISM BRANCH ............................................................. 114
FIG. 28 CURRENT COLOUR MY TRAVEL’S LOGO ....................................................................................... 114
FIG.29 FEEDBACK FROM COLOUR MY TRAVEL’S DIRECTOR CONCERNING THE EVOLUTION OF THE GHOST
TOUR AND THE PERSPECTIVE IN DARK TOURISM .................................................................................... 117
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .................................................................................................................. 5
CONTENTS ....................................................................................................................................... 6
GENERAL INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................... 7
PART I: OFFER TOURISM PRODUCTS BASED ON QUALITY THROUGH
INNOVATION AND EXPERIENTIAL, CASE OF GHOST TOURISM AND GHOST
TOUR ...................................................................................................................................................... 11
Chapter 1. Destination’s tourist offer, the case of Malta ......................................................12
1.1 Destination’s global tourist offer................................................................................. 13
1.1.1 The tourism destination: how to define it? ..................................................... 13
1.1.2 The tourism product: 2 dimensions .................................................................. 13
1.1.3 The tourism product in the cultural area ........................................................ 14
1.1.4 The tourists’ expectations regarding the tourism product quality ....... 14
1.2 The guided tour: a major product for a destination ............................................ 15
1.2.1 What is a guided tour? ............................................................................................ 15
1.2.2 Heritage in the heart of tourism guided tours ............................................... 16
1.2.3 Some rules to follow for more quality tours .................................................. 17
1.2.4 The importance of the guide for a good quality of tours ........................... 17
1.3 Malta destination............................................................................................................... 18
1.3.1 Presentation & geography ..................................................................................... 18
1.3.2 Malta: a fascinating history ................................................................................... 18
1.3.3 A destination with an array of tourist assets ................................................. 19
1.3.3.1 Practical assets .................................................................................................. 19
1.3.3.2 Types of tourism ............................................................................................... 20
1.3.4 The situation of tourism in Malta ....................................................................... 21
Chapter 2. Innovation and experiential marketing: how to use them in a tourism
product, the case of a guided tour?................................................................................................24
2.1 Innovation in tourism ...................................................................................................... 24
2.1.1 Innovation: how to define it? ............................................................................... 24
2.1.2 The different types of innovation ....................................................................... 25
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2.1.3 What is the utility of innovation? ....................................................................... 25
2.1.4 Innovation in tourism ............................................................................................. 26
2.2. Experiential marketing in tourism ............................................................................ 28
2.2.1 Experiential marketing: to go beyond the simple products’ attributes
..................................................................................................................................................... 28
2.2.2 The main pillars of experiential marketing .................................................... 28
2.2.3 Experiential marketing and the consumer: a long process from the preconsumption to the post-consumption ....................................................................... 29
2.2.4 Polysensory in the core consumption’s experience .................................... 30
2.2.4.1 The power of stimuli in the consumption’s experience .................... 30
2.2.4.2 The importance of stimuli to get closer to the consumer ................. 31
2.2.5 Emotions are essential in experiential marketing ....................................... 32
2.3. How to combine innovation and experiential marketing in a quality
tourism product? ...................................................................................................................... 34
2.3.1 Innovation combined to an experience ............................................................ 34
2.3.2 Innovation combined to emotions and polysensory................................... 35
2.3.3 Innovation and experiential marketing: a successful interrelation ...... 35
Chapter 3. The ghost tour: a key product in a niche and innovative market ..............36
3.1. Ghost tourism: a niche market more and more popular................................... 37
3.1.1 Ghost tourism: attached to dark tourism and spooky tourism ............... 37
3.1.1.1 Dark tourism: a form of tourism focused on death and pain .......... 37
3.1.1.2 Spooky tourism as a branch of dark tourism......................................... 38
3.1.2 Ghost tourism as a niche market ........................................................................ 40
3.1.3 The offer in ghost tourism ..................................................................................... 40
3.2. The Ghost Tour product ................................................................................................ 42
3.2.1 What is a ghost tour? ............................................................................................... 42
3.2.2 The performance of the guide is essential ...................................................... 42
3.2.3 The demand from the tourists: paranormal, entertainment and
education................................................................................................................................. 43
3.3. The ghost tour as a business development opportunity for a tourism
company ....................................................................................................................................... 44
3.3.1 People are attracted by mysteries and unknown things ........................... 44
3.3.2 People in the quest of fear emotion ................................................................... 45
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3.3.3 The ghost tour: a product more and more popularised; how to add
value to it and keep it as an innovative product? .................................................... 46
3.3.4 Malta’s assets for ghost tourism ......................................................................... 47
PART II: COLOUR MY TRAVEL, A STRATEGY FOCUSED ON INNOVATION AND
ORIENTATED TOWARDS EXPERIENTIAL MARKETING ................................................ 51
Chapter 1. Mission at Colour My Travel.......................................................................................52
1.1 Colour my travel: a young excursion operator ...................................................... 52
1.1.1 Presentation of the company ............................................................................... 52
1.1.2 Internal audit of Colour My Travel..................................................................... 53
1.1.3 Objectives ..................................................................................................................... 55
1.1.3.1 Qualitative objectives...................................................................................... 55
1.1.3.2 Quantitative objectives................................................................................... 56
1.2 Global offer .......................................................................................................................... 56
1.2.1 Regular tours .............................................................................................................. 56
1.2.1.1 Valletta Free Tour............................................................................................. 56
1.2.1.2 Sins in the City ................................................................................................... 56
1.2.1.3 Valletta Ghost Tour .......................................................................................... 57
1.2.2 Occasional tours upon request ............................................................................ 57
1.3 Mission at Colour My Travel ......................................................................................... 58
1.3.1 The main mission ...................................................................................................... 58
1.3.2 Focus on the ghost tour .......................................................................................... 59
1.3.3 Stakes and benefits for the company ................................................................ 59
1.3.4 Future and perspectives......................................................................................... 59
1.3.5 The other tasks .......................................................................................................... 60
Chapter 2. Marketing strategy of Colour My Travel and methodology .........................62
2.1 Market knowledge ............................................................................................................ 62
2.1.1 In which market is Colour My Travel situated? ............................................ 63
2.1.2 Colour My Travel’s competitors .......................................................................... 64
2.1.2.1 Identifying the main competitors............................................................... 64
2.1.2.2 Why and how supervise the competition? ............................................. 65
2.1.2.3 How to proceed to carry out a good competitive intelligence? ...... 65
2.1.2.4 Mystery client to the competitors .............................................................. 66
2.1.3 Market research’s methodology: summary .................................................... 67
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2.2 Marketing Strategy’s methodology ............................................................................ 67
2.2.1 Segmentation .............................................................................................................. 67
2.2.2 Positioning: innovation in the heart of the production of tours ............. 68
2.2.3 Colour My Travel’s targets .................................................................................... 69
2.2.3.1 General targets .................................................................................................. 70
2.2.3.2 Specific targets................................................................................................... 71
2.3 Quality approach ............................................................................................................... 73
2.3.1 Human resources and quality staff .................................................................... 73
2.3.2 Quality policy and control ..................................................................................... 74
Chapter 3. Marketing strategy, tours and mix-marketing ..................................................76
3.1 The tours............................................................................................................................... 76
3.1.1 Improve the current products ............................................................................. 76
3.1.1.1 Valletta Free Tour............................................................................................. 76
3.1.1.2 Sins in The City .................................................................................................. 76
3.1.2 New products’ development ................................................................................ 77
3.1.2.1 Mdina Free Tour ............................................................................................... 77
3.1.2.2 Discover the Maltese religious heritage .................................................. 77
3.1.2.3 Enjoy and relax in the Maltese countryside ........................................... 78
3.2 Distribution ......................................................................................................................... 79
3.2.1 Online ............................................................................................................................ 79
3.2.2 Office and point of sale............................................................................................ 79
3.2.3 Other sellers/intermediaries ............................................................................... 80
3.3 Promotion ............................................................................................................................ 80
3.3.1 Social media ................................................................................................................ 81
3.3.2 Direct marketing and distribution of documents ......................................... 81
3.3.3 Direct communication............................................................................................. 81
3.3.4 Travel sites and reviews websites ..................................................................... 82
3.3.4.1 TripAdvisor ......................................................................................................... 82
3.3.4.2 Couchsurfing ...................................................................................................... 82
3.3.5 Public relations .......................................................................................................... 83
3.3.6 Internet ......................................................................................................................... 83
3.4 Volume and budget ........................................................................................................... 84
3.4.1 Tours volume .............................................................................................................. 84
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3.4.2 Pricing ........................................................................................................................... 85
3.4.3 Budget and financial resources ........................................................................... 85
PART III: THE GHOST TOUR, A KEY PRODUCT TO ENHANCE EXPERIENTIAL
MARKETING ........................................................................................................................................ 88
Chapter 1. Understand opinions and expectations regarding the product ..................89
1.1 Presentation of the surveys and the methodology .............................................. 90
1.1.1 Which information to collect and for which objectives? ........................... 90
1.1.2 Observation ................................................................................................................. 90
1.1.3 Interviewing different kinds of people ............................................................. 91
1.1.4 Satisfaction questionnaire ..................................................................................... 92
1.1.4.1 Calculation of the sample’s size .................................................................. 92
1.1.4.2 Satisfaction questionnaire’s structure ..................................................... 93
1.2 Audit of the ghost tour through customers’ feedback: a lack of experiential
......................................................................................................................................................... 94
1.2.1 General quality of the tour .................................................................................... 94
1.2.2 Locations ...................................................................................................................... 94
1.2.3 Stories............................................................................................................................ 94
1.2.4 Atmosphere, effects and senses .......................................................................... 95
1.2.5 The guide’s performance ....................................................................................... 95
1.2.6 Conclusion of the different feedback................................................................. 96
1.3 The key orientations of improvement ...................................................................... 96
1.3.1 Improve the guide’s performance ...................................................................... 96
1.3.1.1 The importance of appearance ................................................................... 96
1.3.1.2 Involve more the tourists during the tour .............................................. 97
1.3.1.3 Play a theatrical performance and add some drama and bloody
parts ..................................................................................................................................... 97
1.3.2 Use more effects during the tours ...................................................................... 98
1.3.3 Stimulate the customers’ imagination and emotions ................................. 98
1.3.4 As a conclusion: a more experiential tour ....................................................... 99
Chapter 2. Ghost tour and mix-marketing: how to offer this product? ....................... 104
2.1 Promotion, distribution and price ............................................................................104
2.1.1 Price and distribution ...........................................................................................104
2.1.2 A promotion focused on experiential marketing .......................................105
172
2.1.2.1 Target specific people and promote the experience.........................105
2.1.2.2 Play with the sensory ....................................................................................105
2.1.3 Highlight experiential, entertainment and education ..............................106
2.2 The product: the operational improvements .......................................................106
2.2.1 The effects during the tour..................................................................................106
2.2.2 The guide’s performance .....................................................................................108
2.2.3 Collaboration with a ghost hunt team ............................................................109
2.3 Other products to offer attached to the ghost tour? ..........................................110
2.3.1 Other locations for new ghosts tours? ............................................................110
2.3.2 A new product focused on paranormal experience...................................110
2.3.3 Occasional and private events upon request ...............................................111
Chapter 3. The perspectives in the future with a dark tourism branch and
assessment of the mission ............................................................................................................... 111
3.1 Why a new branch dedicated to dark tourism and how to be prepared to
this new perspective? ...........................................................................................................112
3.1.1 The reasons of choosing dark tourism ...........................................................112
3.1.1.1 An interesting type of tourism ..................................................................112
3.1.1.2 A coherent range of products ....................................................................112
3.1.2 Prepare the human resources ............................................................................113
3.2 Work on the promotion and on the visibility .......................................................114
3.2.1 The promotion of the new branch....................................................................114
3.2.2 Start building a network of dark tourism in Malta ....................................115
3.3 Assessment of the mission and perspectives .......................................................116
3.3.1 Opinion of Colour My Travel’s director about the dark tourism’s
perspective ...........................................................................................................................116
3.3.2 Results of the mission ...........................................................................................120
3.3.3 Personal assessment..............................................................................................120
GENERAL CONCLUSION ..........................................................................................................123
BIBLIOGRAPHY .........................................................................................................................125
TABLE OF APPENDICES ..........................................................................................................130
TABLE OF FIGURES ..................................................................................................................166
TABLE OF CONTENTS ..............................................................................................................168
173
Abstract
Throughout this dissertation, an excursion operator’s issues were studied in order to
create a suitable marketing strategy for it. As an innovative company, it was
important to build a strategy based on innovation with an experiential marketing
orientation so as to go further into the tours’ quality and the delivered experiences. A
focus and a case study were done on the ghost tour, a favourable product for an
experiential marketing’s development.
Key words:
Malta – experiential marketing – innovation - guided tours – walking tours – dark
tourism – ghost tourism – ghost tour - guides
Résumé
A travers le présent mémoire, les problématiques d’une agence proposant des visites
guidées ont été étudiées afin de créer une stratégie marketing adaptée à celle-ci. En
tant qu’entreprise innovante, il a été primordial de constuire une stratégie fondée sur
l’innovation avec des orientations plus spécifiquement attachées au marketing
expérientiel dans le but d’aller plus loin dans la qualité des visites et des expériences
offertes. Une étude de cas a été réalisée à propos du ghost tour, un produit favorable
au développement d’un marketing expérientiel.
Mots-clés:
Malte - marketing expérientiel – innovation - visites guidées – tourisme noir –
tourisme fantôme – ghost tour – guides
174