Maldives Tourism- case study globally for smart Marketing ! - Dr Rohantha Athukorala
One of Sri Lanka’s respected marketing professionals Dr Rohantha Athukorala addressing the first edition of “The Maldives Marketing” summit in the Island nation Male’ opinioned that Maldives Tourism is a strong brand globally due to data driven approach by Maldives Tourism that helps build cutting edge brand marketing initiatives. It is a lesson to the world said where the science of marketing is combined with strong creativity said Dr Athukorala who heads the AI based brand mapping entity in Sri Lanka for Clootrack Software Labs which is based out of Delaware, USA.
Marketing today is a ‘science’, given the strong data driven approach required with AI technology that brand Maldives users he voiced the key note speaker at the Maldives Marketing Summit 2023. Athukorala is a product of Unilever and ReckittBenckiser award winning marketer is also the former Chairman of Sri Lanka Tourism and Sri Lanka Export Development Board. You have to monitor the brand health of a tourism marketing programme just like a FMCG brand if you are to build a power brand in the service sector voiced the speaker. The typical attributes of a brand health report that must be tracked periodically are Brand Familiarity, Overall impressions, Brand Interest, Recommendation to travel apart from the Artificial Intelligence(AI) parameters – Category drivers,
Brand drivers and Delight drivers of current and potential customers. Maldives Tourism is a model country this kind of scientific brand management opinioned Athukorala.
The old model of tourism is the Exhibition mania that many countries adopt even today said the speaker. The model is totally Meta and its all about maintaining brand salience in the identified key markets that the country want to focus on be it – UK, China, India,
Germany, France, Middle East or Russia which are similar markets that brand Tourism also target he said. Once you get into the mind of a consumer you have track the purchasing behaviour and how the consumer moves through funnel. Sharp marketeers after targeting can move them through the funnel of purchasing at the shortest possible time which is where the skill comes on the selection of the promotional mix which in turn will impact the budget spent he said.