Abstract

In tourism marketing literature, several topics have been taken into account and studied by scholars, for instance: destination image (either projected by destination, or perceived by tourists), and market segmentation. Even though there is such interest on topics that are constituent elements of the marketing concept, little has been written on the DMOs overall marketing process. The purpose of the paper is to describe the marketing process implemented by some Italian DMOs, in order to establish whether the marketing concept is associated to promotion, or it is considered a thorough process that involve the entire organisation. Five different DMOs have been studied through qualitative research techniques: namely semi structured interviews to marketing managers and analysis of internal documents. Findings prove that there is a twofold orientation toward marketing: in some DMOs marketing is a complex process that, on the basis of market analyses permit the organisation to decide its marketing mix; on the contrary, in other DMOs it is equated to promotion. Although the limited sample size, this study sheds light on different practices implemented at an operational
level.