Tourism has become one of the most active areas for digital marketing strategy development. Nowadays, almost all players have developed some kind of digital approach in order to publicise or promote their product. Trying to reach the European tourism market, the national travel and tourism authorities of small Cabo Verde have asked for a strategy based on digital media for global communication results. Their goal is to empower their touristic potential throughout social media and any others digital channels. This work presents a possible digital marketing strategy developed throughout social media dynamics generated by users´ interactions.
TopIntroduction
Technologies had introduced a new level of challenges for global touristic players. Through technologies it’s possible to promote and developed personalized touristic offers independently customers’ proximity, culture or religion.
For this reason, touristic players have been adapting and developing, almost at the same rhythms of technologies development, their communication strategies. Indeed, technology and the internet have created a revolution in tourism marketing (Pease, 2015)
Actually, despite the disparity of locations and related characteristics, all of them might compete for the same customer. Web technologies doesn’t only inspire and provides consumers powerful information’s on potential travel destinations, but also pushes them to take immediate action. Moreover, once in touch with potential or actual consumers, web technologies allow to tourism players to continue their endless efforts for a new visit or a return. Nowadays mobile devices (smartphones, tablets or any other computer portable based device) had already largely surpassed the number of computers or workstations (Pease, 2015). This tendency is much more than a technology issue – it represents a common social paradigm, at almost developed countries.
As a result, it no surprise that easy access to unlimited information combines with peoples' craving to share their experience with others. Many of them are aiming to get some “out of formal circuits” information’s. Such tendency has just created a huge shift in the types of offers that people take, where and when they go, how they book and what activities are they pursuing while travelling. The standard agency played offer has become almost obsolete facing the personalized and customized travel itinerary. At this step, consumers have powerful tools at their disposal and so tourism operators. Therefore, throughout web technologies powered by such social media society, nowadays it is almost possible that a hotel located at Cabo Verde has just as much access to reach a potential visitor as a five-star caribbean hotel (T. Guarda, 2017)
Given that web marketing it is a low-cost strategy and because online marketing is easily accessible, it has opened up global competition, accessible to all tourism players.
This work draws a possible strategy for a small African country with sparse resources but with phenomenal tourism potential – Cabo Verde. Regarding such objective this research has just endorsed the follow questions:
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What kind of presence is possible to maintain on web with Cabo Verde available resources (financial resources and human resources)?
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Which kind of digital marketing dynamics among adopted tools and techniques would it be possible to address for Cabo Verde tourism office?
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How would it be possible to bring closer the users’ personal preferences and the recommendation systems?
Following the introduction this paper it is presented Cabo Verde as a country on different dimensions, social characteristics, economy, technology and security. Then tourism marketing is introduced, and touristic products types are explained. Continuing with same theme, on the next section, Cabo Verde tourism potential is presented through country’s main interests. The following section is dedicated to digital marketing, continuing on the next section dedicated to digital marketing tools. Thus, the digital marketing strategy proposal is presented and fully explained. The practice appears on the next section and conclusions are draw closing this paper.
TopCarbo Verde
The Cabo Verde archipelago was uninhabited until the 15th century, when Portuguese explorers discovered and colonized the islands, establishing the first European settlement in the tropics. Ideally located for the Atlantic slave trade, the islands grew prosperous throughout the 16th and 17th centuries, attracting merchants, privateers, and pirates. The end of transatlantic slavery in the 19th century led to economic decline and emigration. Cabo Verde gradually recovered as an important commercial center and stopover for shipping routes. Incorporated as an overseas department of Portugal in 1951, the islands continued to campaign for independence, which was achieved in 1975 (Madeira, 2015).