Marketing challenges about hotel industries in Cyclades island Essay

Marketing challenges about hotel industries in Cyclades island - Essay Example The subject deals with the point of view of two broad streams of knowledge – economy, and, marketing, with a heavier inclination towards challenges in tourism marketing in general, and, towards the Cyclades Islands in particular. Business Week in one of its articles asked â€Å"What a poor country to do?†, and said, â€Å"Ask the average economist how a country can lift itself out of poverty, and the answer will be simple: Educate your populace, squelch inflation, open your economy to free trade and investment, and then sit back and watch gross domestic product soar† (businessweek.com, 1997). True to its assertions, it is not that simple. Many poor economies, especially those dependent on tourism have made a mistake in relation to this. Greece’ ascension to the EU could do no miracles, and now talk of leaving the Eurozone is back in the air, though the majority of Greeks do not approve this(Wall St. News, 2011). As Theodore Levitt pointed out back in 1960 in his famous article Marketing Myopia, â€Å"Every major industry was once a growth industry. But some that are now riding a wave of growth enthusiasm are very much in the shadow of decline. Others which are thought of as seasoned growth industries have actually stopped growing. In every case the reason growth is threatened, slowed, or stopped is not because the market is saturated. It is because there has been a failure of management.† Levitt (1975) in his classic railroad example argued that today the railroads which were once a craze in the U.S. have been replaced by a developed transport system. He describes this as a trend wherein people were convinced that they were not a part of the transportation business as â€Å"they presumed themselves to be in the railroad business.† Then he further explains that they believed this to be a development that was â€Å"railroad-oriented instead of transportation oriented; they were product-oriented instead of customer-orient ed† (Levitt, 1960). Even after more than five decades, Levitt’s arguments appear to be as valid and relevant as they were then, in all industries, and in all parts of the world. The hotel industry in the Cyclades Islands is no different. Therefore, as in the railroad case, the problem is not with the railroads, but with its understanding about its own fundamentals, in what business it was. In relation to this the fundamentals, the present review of literatures will try to answer the research question â€Å"what are the marketing challenges for the hotel industry in the Cyclades Islands†. The review will first shed light on the nature and characteristics of service industries, followed by a study of the marketing challenges in them. It will subsequently make a review of what researchers say about the marketing cha