tourism consultancy

9 Square offers a wide range of services in tourism and leisure industry. 9 Square offers services like Tourism Research, Marketing Planning, Market Representation, training and recruiting through its tourism consultancy. The solutions we provide support your organization at a strategic, tactical, and operational level.

Our clientele profile is significantly diverse and consists of entities representing different tourism and leisure industries like accommodations, attractions, Tourism Boards and even government bodies worldwide. Regardless of your organization's background, size, or location; we offer professional advice and executive support that helps you attain your personal goals.

• Tourism Research

  Tourism Research will be the base for developing your tourism strategy. To provide you with your best outcome, we offer various research types in order to serve the diverse clientele requirements i.e., Locating Destination, Target market research and Competitor research.

  We as consultants provide the combination of stand alone research merging with master plans, which involve strategic implication.

  Locating Destination

  Locating Destination is the basic practice where we look for and compares possible destinations and their overall feasibility in terms of :

  • Accessibility for guests, suppliers and construction companies;
  • Local, regional, national or international level laws and regulations concerning building, licensing and other aspects;
  • Infrastructural possibilities concerning supply of utilities and communication;
  • Major stakeholders involved such as government bodies or local communities;
  • Presence of accommodation, activities, restaurants/bars and transportation means;
  • Environmental impacts that your business will have on the destination (financial, organizational, economical, technical, social, juridical and ecological).

  This enables us to conclude and even recommend the feasibility of a particular destination and a potential transformational plan if the analysis is applied to an existing destination.

  Target market

  After locating destination and getting feasibility reports we study the potential market through Target market research. This is where we look for the latest tourism statistics and trends that applies to your sector. We combine different statistics, focus group interviews and online tourism trend questionnaires about the preferences and choices of individual tourists, such as:

  • What makes a tourist decide to go to your destination?
  • What are their main sources of information?
  • Which booking methods do they use?

  Our team will give better idea on specifying your target markets in demographic terms such as nationality, age, income, lifestyle and expectations. The results can be used for product development and distribution channel management.

  Competitor research

  This research enables us to identify competitor analysis, i.e. your direct and indirect competitors at local, regional, national or international levels. We compare company sizes, product offers, pricing and service levels whilst making use of best practice benchmarking.

  SWOT-analysis

  This analysis determines the Strengths and Weaknesses of your destination and the Opportunities and Threats within the local, national and international environment. The outcome of this analysis forms the base of your destination positioning and you're Unique Selling Proposition (USP), which is a critical aspect of your destination's strategy.

  Destination positioning

  A strategy based on the above research will specify the best way to position your destination towards your desired target markets, and provide the base for essential product & service characteristics.

  A full scope marketing plan or an encompassing business plan will provide a hands-on document for the management and marketing of your tourism destination.

• Tourism Marketing

  9 Square Consultancy provide tourism marketing plans to draw high revenue and continuous business. Our consultants are experienced destination marketers and have been in commanding positions with budget responsibilities. They possess the skills to create a thorough marketing mix, without losing the overview of the ever changing marketing landscape.

  About marketing planning, take a look at our marketing representation program if you are interested in outsourcing to us your complete Marketing & PR activities. Our hands-on and goal orientated approach ensures satisfactory results.

  Through marketing planning, we review or create your marketing mix per component:

  1. Product and Services Development

  The tourism market is growing and new travel niches emerge every day. Your product offer must unite seamlessly with trends in product demand. You want to know how well your offer matches with the demands of your target market. 9 Square Consultancy will review your product- and services range, look at its development potential and position your offer suitably.

  2. Pricing and Revenue Management

  Your pricing strategy is one of the most vulnerable parts of your marketing mix. 9 Square Consultancy judges your pricing strategy and revenue management by revealing your guests price-quality perception, monitoring competitor behavior and analysis of your cost base. This results in an optimal pricing strategy, where necessary, complemented with adapted revenue (or yield) management methods.

  3. Distribution Channel Management

  When you market and sell your tourism product through multiple channels, you want to know how these channels perform and which value each one adds to your destination. This counts for channels that you operate yourself and for any third parties that you may use. 9 Square Consultancy review your distribution channels and measure their individual performance in terms of quantity and quality. We improve your distribution efforts through optimizing existing channels and exploring the possibilities for new ones.

  4. Branding and communication

  Proper branding ensures a consistent message and the right associations with your destination. Communication and branding work in two directions: the branding and communication towards the market and the branding and communication within your own organization. 9 Square Consultancy reviews your destination's current image and matches it with your preferred image based on your destination's market positioning. The findings will be implemented in an internal policy towards your staff, and a media plan to achieve the desired image.

  Our destination branding approach is built on powerful promotion methods using both conventional media and new media :

  • Advertising campaigns through papers, radio, holdings and TV;
  • Search Engine Marketing campaigns;
  • Social media campaigns on leading sites such as Facebook, MySpace or Twitter;

  The latter two are interesting when your destination has a smaller budget. If you are unfamiliar with the terms social media, we will lay out their signification and potential in a personal meeting.

• Market Representation

  9 Square Consultancy offers marketing representation services for tourism destinations. You can outsource your entire marketing activity to us, and we will ensure active promotion of the destination in selected target markets, accompanied by the right destination branding. We do this in a cost effective way, with a focus on visitor increase both in quantity and quality terms. Our aim is to make your destination primarily include itself in the decision making process of travel trade.

  We offer the following marketing representation services for the trade:

  • Information- and help desk services;
  • (Regional) website management, search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM);
  • Media campaign management. This can include conventional media planning (papers, radio, TV) and new media of the web 2.0 generation (social networks).

  Depending on the location of your target market region, we also offer

  • Public relations and press contact management;
  • Specialized travel trade contact management;
  • Representation on worldwide tourism fairs.

  Our consultants are experienced marketers with equipped knowledge about a diverse set of markets in different location.