E-marketing Promotional Tools for Tourism: Pilot Web-platform for Cluj-Napoca as a Tourist Destination

Abstract

The purpose of the paper is to reflect the advantages of innovative e-marketing tools for promotion in tourism, by creating a pilot web-portal (yet in experimental phase) in order to facilitate the consumer’s search for information process (as reflected by the theory of Consumer Behaviour) with regard to the city of Cluj-Napoca and its surroundings, as a tourist destination. The promoting method used is the web marketing, based on data collected from various market studies and statistics. Cluj-Napoca’s most salient attributes, found to be relevant for the overall attitude towards the destination were: academic, multicultural and business centre with significant potential for the leisure and medical tourism. The market studies showed the obvious preference of Transylvania's visitors for Internet as an information platform. The target market segments’ profiles and the existing offers were considered. Consequently, a multilanguage website (http://around-cluj.info) was developed, built around an interactive map with high-resolution satellite view (Google Maps integration with open-source GIS GeoServer). Thus, with appropriate amelioration, this tool has the potential of being used further as a study material for research on consumers’ travel behaviour and it could possibly be developed into a true prototype-platform for the entire county Cluj as a tourist destination.