Perceptions of Visitor Relationship Marketing Opportunities by Destination

Tourism Management 33 (2012) 1281e1285

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Research note

Perceptions of visitor relationship marketing opportunities by destination marketers: An importance-performance analysis
Samantha Murdy, Steven Pike*
School of Advertising, Marketing & Public Relations, Queensland University of Technology, 2 George Street, Brisbane, Queensland 4001, Australia

a r t i c l e i n f o
Article history: Received 14 November 2011 Accepted 28 November 2011 Keywords: Customer relationship marketing CRM Visitor relationship marketing VRM Destination marketing organisations Importance-performance analysis

a b s t r a c t
Customer relationship marketing (CRM) initiatives are increasingly being adopted by businesses in the attempt to enhance brand loyalty and stimulate repeat purchases. The purpose of this study was to examine the extent to which destination marketing organisations (DMOs) around the world have developed a visitor relationship marketing (VRM) orientation. The proposition underpinning the study is that maintaining meaningful dialogue with previous visitors in some markets would represent a more efficient use of resources than above the line advertising to attract new visitors. Importance-performance analysis was utilised to measure destination marketers’ perceptions of the efficacy of CRM initiatives, and then rate their own organisation’s performance across the same range of initiatives. A key finding was that mean importance was higher than perceived performance for every item. While the small sample limits generalisability, in general there are appears to be a lack of strategic intent by DMOs to invest in VRM. Crown Copyright Ó 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction Customer relationship marketing (CRM) has become one of the fastest growing practices within business (Raman, Wittmann, & Rauseo, 2006). CRM

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