Marketing in the Function of Promotion of Tourism and Hunting Tourism Potentials

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The Faculty of Management in Zajecar, Megatrend University, Zajecar 19000, Serbia

Received: March 7, 2012 / Accepted: May 2, 2012 / Published: June 20, 2012.

Abstract: This paper presents the importance of the development of Serbian rural regions, and analyzes their marketing management potentials. Thus the paper aims to examine rural tourism and hunting tourism in particular in order to evaluate their development as a lucrative type of investment, while considering the including promotional activities. Certain disadvantages and problems that Serbian hunting tourism has been facing as well as the directions for their solution are addressed in the paper.

Key words: Rural tourism, hunting tourism, marketing management, tourism promotion.

1. Introduction

Hunting is an ancient human activity. Thanks to the hunting, human managed to survive in the early stage of human society development. The skill of hunting shaped the human, while the human shaped the ethics of hunting. Through the history of the mankind, hunting skill developed together with the ethics. Today, hunting is a specific industry―hunting tourism, which brings valuable income to organizations that deal with protection, nurture, and application of ethical norms of hunting. Hunting includes the cultivation of love towards game and nature through the actions of protection of the game and population. The hunter hunts only when allowed, he never pursues, maltreats, or deliberately disturbs the game, nor does he allow others to do that. Thus, he hunts according to the planned, rational use of the game, as a partly renewable natural resource. Hunting includes hunting gatherings, nurturing of hunting ethics, and preservation of hunting customs and traditions as well [1].

Hunting tourism represents the most sensitive part of hunting industry and is a specific segment of tourist traffic. The hunting tourism offer is directed towards

one part of tourists—towards hunters, while it is limited by the number and selection of the game. The share of hunting tourism in the total traffic of tourists in Serbia is not great, but it is important for several reasons:

It is conducted mainly away from attractive tourist destinations and outside the main tourist season;

The income that tourism brings, represents significant or major income to the organizations that deal with protection, nurture, and application of the game;

The hunting tourism offers complements and enriches the overall tourist offer of Serbia [2].

2. Rural Areas and Hunting Tourism in Serbia Today

Today’s image of the village in Serbia is far from being excellent. According to the research of Branislav Gulan, associate of the Chamber of Commerce of Serbia, there are 1,961 villages in Serbia with no inhabitants, while 200 villages do not have inhabitants younger than 20. Due to the difficult economic situation, the number of the active agricultural population fell from 904,127 (measured in 1991) to 529,236 (measured in 2002) [3]. This negative trend has continued till today.

Table 1 represents the basic data on Serbia’s rural potentials. The data clearly signify that The Republic of Serbia is a rural country, with 80% of the territory covered in rural areas. The number of villages in Serbia is 4706, and 55% of total population lives in rural areas, where negative birthrate is also present. The population of rural areas is mainly employed in crop and animal farming, and less in other aspects of agricultural production. All these highly affect clean and unpolluted Serbian environment, which occupy almost all species of European game.

Serbia has over 300 hunting grounds spread over an area of 6,500,000 hectares, 90% of which is managed by hunting associations. In the hunting grounds of Serbia there are around 20 enclosed hunting areas and over 150 hunting lodges. The Hunting Association of Serbia formulates a price list for hunted game, on the basis of which, hunting associations and tourist agencies specialized in hunting tourism form travel packages, which include transportation, accommodation, and services at the hunting grounds. The hunting tourism in Serbia has a long tradition. The golden ages of Serbian hunting tourism were definitely the 1970s and 1980s. Until 1990s, only the hunting grounds in Vojvodina created the income of 6,000,000 to 8,000,000 USD, while today, the income fell to below 1,000,000 per hunting season.

Foreign hunter tourists are increasingly bypassing Serbia because other countries in the region offer greater benefits and privileges. While hunters can enter Croatia with only an ID card and two weapons, they can enter Serbia only with a passport and one weapon. Although they get proper documents, they cannot take the meat of the game because they cannot get a veterinary certificate which is valid in the European Union. Nobody from Serbia, regardless of the long-term commitments of the hunting agencies, has contacted the meat commission of EU, which has the right to include our region in the list of destinations from which the hunted game can be taken abroad. The special issue for the foreign hunter tourists is crossing the border with hunting dogs. They are frequently rejected for the permission to cross the border due to certain veterinary regulations which, realistically, create more damage than they contribute to the health and safety of animals. All this cause problems and waste time, and thus represents a great factor of rejection of potential foreign clients, due to which the foreign clients decide to go to other hunting tourism destinations which are simpler and not expensive to reach. These are the real problems that are very expensive for Serbia.

However, what is very frequently being overseen related to the hunting tourism is the complementary logistics of the hunting tourism. Namely, the organization of the hunting action is only a segment of the hunting tourism. Equally important is to organise the time the hunter tourist spends outside the hunting area. The sightseeing of the region, getting to know the cultural and historical heritage of the region, and gastronomic specialties represent an important segment of the regional tourism offer, which can be included into the hunting travel package offered to potential clients.

Specially emphasised is the issue of organizing accommodation for the hunter tourists, due to lack of appropriate accommodation capacities. One of the greatest problems is also the accommodation of hunting dogs which hunter tourists bring with them. Bearing in mind that hunting tourism largely relies on rural regions, it is clear that this represents the opportunity for hiring extra workforce in the rural regions of Serbia, for providing accommodation and nutrition services to hunter tourists within the rural households. Rural households engaged in tourism are offered the opportunity not only to offer accommodation, but to directly sell their agricultural products by preparing meals for the tourists, which brings more significant economic effect than selling them on the markets, to large quantity buyers, etc.. Provision of this kind of service is a traditional activity in a large number of countries of the world, and in particular, it is the characteristic of the European tourism offer. Between 600,000 and 1,000,000 households in the world are registered for provision of rural tourism services, with between 6,000,000 and 12,000,000 beds, and they secure between 1,500,000 and 3,000,000 jobs. At this time, Europe is the leader in the field of rural tourism with around 200,000 registered rural tourism service providers (with more than 2,000,000 beds). The number of directly or indirectly employed people in rural tourism in EU is estimated to be around 500,000. It is also estimated that the accommodation at farms, in private houses in villages, and small family boarding houses attracts direct annual tourist spending of around 12,000,000,000 EUR. The positive effects of the rural tourism development are: the increase in employment of local population, additional income for rural households, development of production and service activities, prevention of village-to-city migration, protection and preservation of natural and cultural heritage, and integral development of the rural area. In Europe, the rural tourism is most developed in France, Italy, Spain, and Austria. Serbia has over 300 households that are engaged in rural tourism. Available are 2,500 beds, which is just a small part of the required capacities. This would also lead to the formation of mixed households in rural regions, a concept that has been excluded in Serbia for a long period of time, due to the dogmatic views and quasi-economic positions of former political leaders. However, this concept has proved to be very successful and economically justified in the economies of developed countries, primarily as an opportunity for the households to get continuous income in clearly defined periods of time. At the same time, it represents a means of softening the negative impacts of recession factors in the agricultural production to the financial strengths of the households(for example Japan, where over 50% of rural households are mixed, and the size of the lands is between 3 ha with 4 ha).

3. Marketing Management of a Rural Region as a Hunting Tourism Destination

Considering a tourist destination in all its entirety and abundance of factors which make it a unique and a rounded whole, manifested in the form of natural, anthropogenic, social and cultural-historical, traffic prerogatives and factors on one side, and factors related to the size of developed region’s tourist offer(accommodation, food, entertainment, recreation, wellness and spa centres, bike and pedestrian roads) on the other, it is clear that the management of a tourist destination is based on appreciation and respect for a large numbers of listed factors. The very respecting of the listed factors represents an important determinant of the formation of the basis for the formulation of a tourist destination marketing strategy. Consideration and evaluation of the strength of region’s available resources is just one of the first actions which is undertaken, that should give an answer of its own strength, advantages, disadvantages, and opportunities. For this purpose, the most commonly used is the SWOT analysis.

The starting points of designing a marketing strategy of a rural region as a tourist destination necessarily include the analysis of the environment which focuses on the researches related to the developments on the macro level. The subjects of the analyses are economic, political, cultural, technological, demographic movements in the country and region, as well as on the continent and the whole world. These developments can be transferred by domino effect to all the markets regardless of the impression that it is happening somewhere far away. That is why it is necessary to continuously track and analyse them. Hunting as a collection of a large number of activities has become the target of negative advertisement that has been made for decades by various non-governmental organisations that, at least officially, deal with animal and environment protection. Today, these and such organisations have a very big influence in Serbia on governing structures, and have significant presence in the media. The members of such organisations undertake a number of activities related to the actualisation and realisation of their plans concerning the general hunting ban, which is actually a nonsense, because hunting, if well organised, represent a serious source of income for the country. There are many such organisations active in Serbia today which do not base their activities only on those officially described, but also engage in other activities which result in difficulties with functioning and working of the employees in the field of hunting and hunting tourism, thus bringing the reduction of the income from hunting and hunting tourism. Hunting and hunting tourism are significant flywheels for development of rural regions and employment of the extra workforce, so the setting up of their strategic bases should be carefully approached. Special attention must be paid to the activities of competitive regions, their market performance, travel packages they offer, and the quality of offered services. After initial analyses and researches, it is necessary to make the following step which primarily consists of defining the mission, vision, and aim of the hunting tourism destinations as important factors for the development of the regional tourism. This is the task which requires from a marketing manager to recognise and formulate the mission a destination wants to have in contributing to the development of the rural tourism in the region. The mission has to be formulated and set on the real basis considering the available potentials of the region. On the other hand, what needs to be borne in mind is the need for insisting on distinguishing from other regions in order to achieve the authenticity when entering the market. The vision determines which way to go towards the targets in the future. Apart from the mere making of profits, the targets must comprise a significant level of determinants which will, apart from the need to make profit, stress the need of preservation and improvement of biodiversity of the region, opening of new jobs, and employment of extra workforce from in agricultural field. This would bring to the previous mentioned formation of mixed households in rural regions. The next step that marketing managers should take is the determination of the market appearance strategy. Bearing in mind that the rural regions in Serbia can offer various contents to their potential domestic and foreign clients, it is necessary to apply differentiated marketing strategy for different segments of the market with their specific demands. This will enable to define more closely the elements of the marketing mix of a tourist region and determine and shape the categories of the products, prices, promotions, and sales channels. What is of fundamental importance for the development in rural regions is establishing a quality and functional organisation which will unify and coordinate various segments of tourist and hunting tourism offer of a rural region.

What must not be excluded in any case and what represents the final move in the management of a tourist destination is the control of the entire process of the management of a tourist destination. The most important aspect here is the necessity of control of the management process, as well as the control of achieved results and the level of achievement of previously set goals.

4. The Promotion of Tourism in the Function of Rural and hunting tourism Development

The promotion of tourism represents one of the instruments of tourist policy for achieving certain goals which the policy holders have to define initially. This means that the actions of the promotion of tourism are previously devised, i.e., consciously determined in respect to the goals. The means and methods utilized by the promotion of tourism are common for all forms of economic promotion, but are adapted according to the specific needs of the business and tourist policy holders, in order to bring the attention of the range of tourists as wide as possible, i.e. the part of the population which has objective conditions to undertake a tourist travel. Promotion of tourism primarily affects the development of the preferences and desires for tourist travels, and then, it affects the making of decisions related to the realization of the desires, i.e., the undertaking of specific actions by potential tourists, which is the aim of the promotion of tourism. The promotion of tourism must be observed in a combination with other instruments of tourist or business policy (price policy, tourist offer development

policy, travel packages selling policy, and others). It is certain that an extremely large number of factors affect the efficiency and the effectiveness of the promotion of tourism in rural regions as tourist and hunting tourist destinations. However, when undertaking actions in the promotion of tourism, a Chinese proverb must be borne in mind: “Hit your gong and sell your sweets.”

Inevitably, there is a need to formulate certain rules, which the promotion of the rural regions as the tourist and hunting tourism destinations must be based on:

It is necessary to primarily form a recognizable and positive image of the region as a unique tourist and hunting tourism destination with its singularities.

Depending on the target group in the market—the methods of “serving information” to potential clients needs to be established.

The selection of daily newspapers, specialised magazines and reviews, as well as specialised radio and TV shows is of extreme importance for the efficiency of the promotion of tourism.

Determining the time of publishing the articles or broadcasting radio and TV shows is of crucial importance for the level of promotional efficiency and its contribution to the improvement of the rural tourism, especially if the focus is on the promotion of tourist packages that are closely connected to certain season, i.e., seasonal packages.

The basic barrier related to tourist travelling is the expenses. When forming the prices of tourist packages, what should primarily be borne in mind is whether the offer is proportional with the price. Also, the purchasing power of the potential clients has to be taken into consideration when forming the packages and their prices.

Rural regions must use the current trend of the overall return to nature and healthy living.

Tourists love travelling to regions free of massive tourism which offer a possibility of developing a feeling of tourist’s close and harmonious relationship with nature.

Abandoning a cliché in the tourist promotion it the primary task set upon the marketing managers. Insisting on authenticity is of crucial importance for the development of the tourism in the rural regions. The usage of understandable, clear expressions and presentation of available resources is the way to avoid the deception of the clients, thus earning their trust.

Forming a fresh and memorable story of a rural region as a tourist destination will significantly contribute to the raise of the interest of the potential clients.

Addressing the potential clients each time needs to be done as if they do not know anything about the region. This is an efficient way of avoiding the trap“everybody knows that”—nobody knows everything about a specific destination, except for the managers of those destinations.

Insisting on the variety of contents of the rural region is efficient in holding the attention of a potential client, and is one of the basic factors affecting the duration of a tourist’s stay at a specific destination.

Articles on tourist potentials of a region in newspapers and magazines must be richly illustrated with high-quality photographs. In the same manner, TV shows must contain high-quality videos, focusing on the uniqueness and authenticity of the content of the tourist region offer.

It is necessary to clearly define the product that is offered. It is irrelevant whether it is a mountain, river, tourist manifestation, hunting large or small game or predators—it is necessary to insist on the uniqueness of the tourist product and highlight its distinction in quality from similar products in the market.

There is a need for establishing a tourist offer for each of the 365 days of a year, while escaping the trap of forming seasonal packages by any means. When hunting is in question, the ever-present popular trend of photo-hunting provides a possibility of organising photo-safari during the whole year with special stress on its attractiveness during the game’s reproductive season, when the hunting grounds are covered with young game.

Special attention has to be devoted to the identification of own deficiencies and their elimination.

5. Conclusion

The promotions of tourist and hunting tourism potentials of the rural regions of Serbia have in the previous period, more or less successfully, been conducted by various organisations and associations. The quality, and thus the success of the promotion activities depended primarily on personal affinities and qualities of people that were directly involved in certain activities and contents. What came up to the surface is the lack of clear vision and progress strategy. That is why the promotion was conducted separately without continuity and deeper examination of the issues. A big problem is clearly the adoption of old commonplaces that have been widely used in the promotion of the tourist potentials or rural regions.

To the question of where and how to move on in the promotion of tourist and hunting tourism potentials of rural regions, the best answer would probably be related to the necessity of the recognition of the need for having to build the identity and recognizable image of the rural regions as tourist destinations. The authenticity is the magical word that needs to be put down into the planners of marketing managers for tourist destinations in rural regions. Establishing the long-term strategy for promotion of tourist and hunting tourism potentials of the rural regions is of vital importance for the development of the rural regions. One of the key factors that has to be borne in mind when formulating the promotion of tourist and hunting tourism potentials it the continuity of promotional activities, because without it, there is no adequate satisfaction in terms of achieved results expressed in the level of achieved income.

General trends in the world clearly speak in favour of the development of the rural and hunting tourism as a form of rural tourism, while it remains to be seen if Serbia will use the undisputed tourist potentials of the rural regions.

References

[1] A. ?erani?, The Hunters of Serbia, Democratic Party/Research Publishing center, Beograd, 2006.

[2] R. Prentovi?, Hunting Tourism, Faculty of Sciences, Department of Geography, Tourism, and Hotel Management, Novi Sad, 2005, pp. 8-24.

[3] M. Skrbic, Every Fourth Village in Serbia Is Dying, Educ.[Online] 2005, www.blic.rs/Vesti/Drustvo/185669/Svako-cetvrto-s elo-u-Srbiji-odumire (accessed May 9, 2012).

[4] J. Otovi?, Rural development of Serbia, Presented at the Agricultural and Rural Development Policies Analysis in the Western Balkan Countries Course [Online], Italy, July 20, 2008, www.ekoagrar.in.rs/pdf/ ruralni%20_razvoj_srbije.pdf (accessed May 9, 2012).