Tourism and Birmingham Essay

Submitted By dreamcode000
Words: 5619
Pages: 23

1.0 Introduction
The report is produced based on a destination related to the tourism or hospitality industries located in the United Kingdom, which is Birmingham. Thus, the scope of the report is solely based on Birmingham within city centre and the primary task is to critically analyze the type of communication activities of this selected destination from the perspective of the tourists’ decision making process by according to relevant theoretical models. Thereafter, second task is to identify and define the primary segments of Birmingham as well as to include descriptions of their needs and expectations in term of the services, followed by indicating the key factors of their satisfaction. Last but not least, the final task is on the basis of the author’s personal experience as a tourist in Birmingham which is required to further analyze the service quality and its actual or potential problems in case of tourists belonging to other segments, after that making suggestion for eventual improvement.
In recent years, the city which is centrally located in United Kingdom, Birmingham is named as the most popular conference and events destination by the British Meetings and Events Industry Survey 2012/13 because there are a number of national and international hotel chains (for instances, Hyatt, Radisson, Marriott, etc.) are located in the city centre which makes it the perfect base for conferences and events in any size. On the other hand, in term of education, Birmingham is easily known as student city as there are around 65,000 students in this city (VisitBirmingham, 2013). However, apart from these characteristics, with one of the youngest populations in Europe with 40% of the population under 25 year-old (VisitBirmingham, 2013), Birmingham is briefly defined as a city of distinctive heritage, inspiration, excitement and energetic which is constantly evolving that offers something for everyone who might wants to be blended into experiences such as shopping, multinational cuisine, nightlife, museums, parks, theatres and art galleries, international events and exhibitions, and world-class sports facilities (VisitBirmingham, 2013; Ofwhat, 2013; The ICC, 2013).

2.0 A Critical Analysis of the Communication Activity of Birmingham from the Perspective of the Tourist decision-making process by according to theoretical model
First of all, in the context of travel, tourists will always come across a situation where they have to make decision of choosing a destination, accommodation and so forth. This decision-making process, by definition, is a process of selecting a rational choice from the available options (Business Dictionary, 2013). More to the point, there are countless of factors to take into consideration when planning a trip, therefore what tourists do usually is narrow down those factors into a clear path of what they are really looking for which is based on their initial travel desire and needs and it is certainly involves information searching or gathering from various sources, either word-of-mouth or electronic word-of-mouth. Thereon, there have been many models of decision-making considered by researchers as time goes by and one of it – Mathieson and Wall’s model – is selected to cope with the analysis of how tourists’ decision-making is supported by the communication activity of Birmingham. Theoretically, based on Nu (2006), Mathieson and Wall’s model (Figure 1.1) is a 5-stage linear process which is affected by four related factors which are tourist profile, travel awareness, destination resource and characteristics and trip features.

Figure 2.1: Mathieson and Wall’s model of tourist decision-making
(Source: Nu, 2006; Jancsik, 2013)
As indicated in Figure 1.1 and above-mentioned, travel desires are the initial factor that gives tourists the urge to plan a trip. Those desires are ever changing; it could be for the purposes of education, leisure, business, relaxation, inspiration, getaway from hustle life, and