Identifying Market Potential: The Application of Brand Development Indexing to Pleasure Travel

Abstract

Tourism and travel marketing executives have historically been faced with challenges related to the accurate measurement of market demand and the accurate identification of market potential. Market demand and market potential differ from each other. It is there fore important to understand how they differ with respect to tourism and hospitality services marketing. This study applied brand development indexing (BDI) to tourism. This marketing tool, traditionally used for identifying market potential and resource allocation for goods and products, was found to be very successful in identifying pleasure travel market potential when combined with the proposed opportunity matrix. The study suggests that the utility of brand development indexing for the travel and tourism industry has tremen dous potential for destinations, attractions, and other hospitality services.