Hospitality management
Plog’s book by the title ‘Leisure travel’ is a book ideal for all the people who are interested in travelling mostly for leisure. This book thus targets virtually everyone since leisure is not confine to people of only a certain age or occupation (Plog, 2003).
With this text being an all readers book, its main target is the hotel and travels companies since it mainly deals with human psychology. It explains more about the psychology behind travelling, what motivates travelling for leisure, motivation thought and lifestyle of readers. This helps these companies in making appropriate arrangements in terms of promotional programs and other prior arrangements for the target group. It will also help the companies to understand how to approach and treat any visitor or client who intend to travel on leisure purposes. Thus, the main target group of the book appears to be this company which falls squarely in the hospitality docket (Plog, 2003).
Surveying the book, several factors appear to affect the travel patterns of people. These factors are still the same factors that dictate the different arrangements that a hotel has to make so as to deal with the intended target group effectively.
Looking at the psychographics of the target segments, tastes vary from one target group to another. As a matter of fact, the tastes and preferences of people who are elderly is not the same as to that of younger people. As the tastes are different, so are the lifestyle and preconceptions on leisure travel for the different target groups.
It is clear from the book that the young people usually have a preconception of leisure travel being only for entertainment only. The recently married have the feeling of love and romance revolving around leisure travel. Understanding what each target group will be of utmost importance since the hotel will offer exemplary services to the clients increasing the market outreach of the hotel or company (Plog, 2003).
Looking at the proposed theories in the book and their relation to the real market and target group, his theories can be claimed to be 70% appropriate since their contents and projections have a lot of reality. In fact, I believe that the book and arguments are drawn directly from the society by observation.
Looking at how the book argues about target group and lodging, it appears that people of different gender and ages have different tastes on lodging. For example, young couples would crave to have a their lodging in a classic place where facilities like music and parties are available while older couples would opt to go for quiet places where they can sleep soundly (Plog, 2003).
In our illustration, we will consider the Mada hotels company and white beaches hotels. These two hotel companies deal exclusively with travel and tours in eastern Africa and are known to target different people. The Mada hotels are well known to target older couples who require doing their work quietly and spending their time in silence (madahotels.com). White beaches hotels target the young couple or generally the youth where they provide the youth with facilities that they admire (maragates.com).
Examining the marketing strategies employed by the two companies, The Mada hotels use vigorous promotion in the region on top of classic services which in turn attract the targeted couple. The locations of the hotels are also strategic to ensure that the information indicated on the fliers is replicated in the hotels (madahotels.com). White beaches hotels on the other side hosts several youth oriented events in which they acquire a chance to popularize their services (maragates.com). This is what makes this company the most popular among the youth while the Mada hotels company is much popular among the older couples.
In conclusion, learning the psychology of travelers who are out on leisure is of great importance. This is mainly due to the ability of the hotel company to know how to treat the target group.
Prog C.S. 2003 Leisure travel: A marketing handbook. Prentice Hall Inc
www.madahotels.com
www.maragates.com
