Integrated marketing communication in the hotel industry: Enhancing tourism and national economic development

Abstract

In recent years, integrated marketing communications (IMC) has gained popularity among academics and marketing practitioners. However, the term is not yet well known in the hotel industry in Ghana. This paper seeks to explain the importance of IMC strategy in the hotel industry as well as discuss the practical issues involved with the implementation of IMC strategy. From a broader perspective, IMC considers not only the promotional tools (advertising, sales promotion, personal selling, direct marketing and public relations), but also every contact with the company, the product, or the brand. IMC strategy should work for all customer-focused organisations, but the strategy is more beneficial for service providers, such as the hotel sector. Services are intangible, hence, the task of communicating or promoting service quality to customers is very challenging indeed. This explains the need for IMC strategy, because IMC seeks to promote the company and its services through other activities. These activities were not considered to be part of marketing communications in the past, but with the introduction of IMC, it has become abundantly clear to marketers that a lot of activities that businesses take for granted actually communicate powerful messages to a company's audience. Hotel industry constitutes a major component of the tourism sector and tourism plays a vital role in the nation's economic development agenda. For this reason, the adoption of IMC concept by the hotel industry will benefit the individual companies in the industry and the nation as a whole.