Challenging the traditional culture vulture: Experiential marketing in the cultural tourism sector

Leighton, D

Abstract

This paper investigates experiential marketing as a means of promoting cultural heritage within a highly competitive leisure and tourism marketplace. It explores the role and significance of heritage tourism and the emergence of cultural heritage tourism as a niche market segment. Heritage is explored as a consumption based experience, within a UK tourism sector that has been surprisingly slow to adopt an experiential approach and that has focused instead on conventional marketing concepts and product based, transactional offerings. Indications are however that those cultural heritage attractions that have moved away from a traditional product focus toward an experiential approach have succeeded in maintaining or even increasing visitor numbers in the face of adverse market conditions. They may have located- or even created- new, niche visitor segments, or they may simply be engaging traditional visitor segments in new ways. The analytical basis for the evaluation is provided through a comparative case study analysis of two cultural heritage attractions operating in niche segments. The paper concludes by proposing a diagnostic model for practitioners taking forward experiential marketing as a timely and effective niche marketing strategy.

Citation

Leighton, D. (2010, November). Challenging the traditional culture vulture: Experiential marketing in the cultural tourism sector. Presented at ATLAS Annual Conference: Mass tourism vs Niche tourism, Limassol, Cyprus

• Presentation Conference Type: Other
• Conference Name: ATLAS Annual Conference: Mass tourism vs Niche tourism
• Conference Location: Limassol, Cyprus
• Start Date: Nov 3, 2010
• End Date: Nov 5, 2010
• Publication Date: Jan 1, 2010
• Deposit Date: Dec 20, 2010
• Publicly Available Date: Apr 5, 2016
• Keywords: experiential marketing, heritage tourism, niche marketing
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