The growing importance of services and their market nature, along with the rapid development of tourism, are among the most important features of the Polish market. The emergence of integration processes in politics and the economy, and the liberalization of border crossings – the removal of visa, customs, and currency barriers – increase the propensity to travel. There is a development of international contacts caused by investments abroad and the creation of multinational enterprises. The standard of living of the society is rising, which increases the frequency of leisure, sightseeing, business, and other trips. Poland is recording a clear development of tourist traffic and the strengthening of the importance of enterprises involved in tourism services.
The heterogeneity of tourism causes a great diversity of tourism enterprises. The largest group consists of tour operators offering packages of tourism services and their agents. These entities constitute an element of the distribution channel. Tour operators and their agents belong to the wholesale and retail levels in the tourism services distribution chain, and the promotion of a tourism product in such a system is determined by a varied level of effectiveness.
Distribution of service packages in tourism and the effectiveness of promotion
<\/strong>Tourism packages are distributed through traditionally built channels – there is a producer level and intermediaries at n- levels (usually the wholesale and retail levels). The producer level is defined by the presence of tourism service providers. The wholesaler level, on the other hand, is defined by the presence of tour operators who purchase individual services from providers, create a package consisting of several services, and then promote and sell it as a new tourism product. This package of services is sold independently by tour operators or by agents who fulfill the function of retailers in the distribution channel system. Agents can be local or regional and do not need a permit for their market activities – unlike wholesalers – as defined by the Act on Tourism Services of August 1997. The distribution channels for tourism services appearing in Poland are usually long, and at the retail level – wide. Many tour operators conduct sales in a retail network consisting of several hundred distributors. In developed markets, the distribution of a tourism product is based on wide channels, also at the wholesale level (for example, Great Britain), but this phenomenon is not yet observed in Poland. The operation of distribution channels is usually based on franchise agreements, but this usually applies to well-known tour operators operating in international markets. In the case of smaller entities with a weaker reach, agency or mixed agreements are concluded, which are negotiated individually. In a ready-made distribution channel, one can observe the process of shaping the strategy and marketing communication policy, which by assumption can have the character of push and pull concepts. In one case, the offer is pushed through the channel, including promotion, and in the other – only information about the needs and preferences of the recipients is a stimulus for shaping the promotion program (marketing communication). The role of wholesalers and retailers in this process is not the same. Wholesalers independently prepare the promotion concept and implement it, selling the package of services to final buyers, or pass it on (together with the product) to a retailer, who either blindly implements the option imposed by the wholesaler or supplements the communication system with their own elements. This second possibility usually applies to entities that, in addition to being retailers in the distribution of an operator’s package (a so-called external package), also build their own package by purchasing individual services from selected providers and have the ability to add elements of their own concept to the external promotion concept.
It is clear, however, that this is a complicated system, but one that accurately reflects the situation in the distribution of a product composed of several tourism services. This chaos is unfortunately characteristic of poorly developed tourism markets and is also typical for Poland, where there is a lack of specialization in the tourism market. Therefore, many companies organize tourist events and at the same time act as an agent-retailer for others. This results in a system where a given tour operator prepares and sells a product through its own channel and at the same time participates – as a retailer – in the distribution channel of another tour operator. Preparing effective promotion under such conditions is a difficult task. The author conducted research on the effectiveness of this promotion, presenting the results in the further part of the article.
The article comes from the journal “Logistyka” 1/2008.