A New Concept in Promoting Tourism: Thematic Evenings

Abstract

IntroductionThe PR activity became increasingly important in almost every field of activity: public institutions, companies, small organizations, because the image as a trading characteristic became a major factor to realize the assumed purposes of organizations. In Romania in the first years after the change of political system in 1989 few companies were aware that not just the quality of products, but the image constructed carefully by a well-trained specialist in PR, sells. The attitude switched on in the last 15 years because Romania became a free trade market and many big companies promoting intensively and persuasively their brands came into Romanian market with well-designed PR campaigns. Romanian companies and even small group or family business have to resist and became more and more conscious about the role of a PR specialist in their business. Still there is a lack of specialist in communication on labor market and many small businesses do not fully understand the role of PR in branding. Although in the last years managers started to call on PR specialists in order to improve their images and their presence as a well-defined brand in the customers' awareness.The present article studies specific PR instruments less used in tourism i.e. Thematic Evenings (TE) designed and realized in a regional travel agency in Timisoara, Romania. TE are conceptual events in which we used more means: conferences, gastronomic experiences, images, videos, discussions with natives speakers from different location of the world, slide presentations, artistic moments and artifacts. These were not separate events but a full series of 15 such TE conceived as a coherent promotion campaign in order to fulfill the objectives of this work namely to increase visibility and image of the company and to rise differentiations and specifications in the customers opinions.Conceptual events are used in many other fields: social campaigns, artistic promotions, marketing etc. but less in tourism which mostly uses the traditional instruments online and offline or in written media, TV, broadcasting and tourism fairs. We considered as crucial for the image of the company the direct connection with the public in a room and in a designed event intermixing the ideas of conferences, presentation and show. Hence the originality of this approach is the direct connection and man to man discussions with representatives of specific cultures. This is more than just writing texts or posting on social media because the customer can enter into the atmosphere and ask questions, taste specific food, participate with all senses and intellectually to an insight into this new world we wanted to promote.Theoretical frameworkThe approach in the analysis of TE has mainly two coordinates: a PR dimension and a specific approach about tourist/tourism experience.The marketing concepts of price, product, distribution and communication are not sufficient to meet the communicative needs of the tourism industry. It is necessary to develop a theoretical framework for public relations which focuses on the various public sectors, the relationships that are established with them, to know and share the experiences of tourists and the images, attitudes and opinions that derive from the whole tourism process (Huertas, 2008, 408).Bernard Dagenais give some answers about the necessity of a public relation specialist in one organization. His arguments are that public relations are practiced because we cannot live without communication and because of some specific purposes of communication related to a specific item: drawing attention in forming, creating sympathy solving problems. Public relations are a part of the management of challenges or crisis and their main purposes are to improve the image to influence public opinion, to answer journalists or public questions and finally to defend or impose a better image in the public consciousness. Whether it is about one or all these reasons, companies began to understand the specific role of PR for their business (Dagenais 2002, p. …