HELPING THE PRIVATE SECTOR TO DRIVE TOURISM
Private Sector Marketing Groups / Consortiums (PSMG)
Kamageo has a history of helping the private sector to work together to achieve common tourism goals. The most obvious example of this is Malawi, where we successfully run the Malawi Marketing Consortium.
What is a Private Sector Marketing Group?
A PSMG is a joint effort between property owners and tour operators working together to actively promote their destination to the trade and to travellers. By sweeping aside the red tape, politics and budget restraints that often hamper the best efforts of national tourist boards, the PSMG can effectively and efficiently target the right audiences and follow through on agreed marketing initiatives. Using a simple structure – managed either completely or partly by us (you choose) – the PSMG can be dynamic, creative and impactful in helping achieve the tourism goals you have today.
Is the tourism board involved?
In an ideal world, this is in conjunction with your national tourist board (with them contributing to funds), but equally it can be a stand-alone organisation. Your tourism board can only achieve so much and is restricted by government regarding strategy, timings, politics and of course, budget. Whilst its clear they have great plans for the future, can you always be sure that these will ever be implemented? We do not recommend you compete or challenge the work of the tourist board. Instead we suggest that this way, you can directly influence the marketing activity, as well as implement it quickly and effectively.
Why does your destination need market representation?
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Kamageo completes comprehensive research into UK travel trade attitudes towards Africa; current listings of all sub-Saharan African destination across 220 websites and 60+ printed brochures to see who is and who isn’t selling which countries.
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We closely monitor the UK’s travel media to see exactly what editorial each African country has benefitted from.
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We conduct on-going research on the opinions of the UK’s travelling public to see which destinations in Africa currently excite them and which don’t.
So we can recognise which destinations need most help and where : Could your country be proactively promoted by more tour operators? Could you be getting far more exposure in the media? Could you increase/maximise the interest that exists amongst UK travellers.
How does the PMSG work?
It’s relatively simple. Kamageo creates the PSMG and provides all the necessary central coordination. A senior marketing coordinator would be appointed at Kamageo to run the organisation for you (and dependent upon the scale of the organisation, potentially we’d even hire a coordinator in your destination, to provide you with a local point of contact). They'd then work with the entire team at Kamageo to implement the agreed marketing plan.
Each lodge, hotel or ground handler would contribute an agreed annual fee, which would go into a central pot to fund all activities. Kamageo would then provide all members with a copy of an agreed annual marketing plan to be implemented over the 12 months and provide comprehensive reporting on developments and achievements.
The focus of activity would obviously be more on the entire destination, rather than individual properties or operators, but be assured your business would be heavily promoted in this process.
What kind of activities?
We can provide all the activities you require - maximising UK operator support; running trade roadshows; coordinating fam trips; running a press office; organising media trips; attending consumer travel shows.....you name (or better still, let us recommend it) and we can deliver. See our various services pages for more ideas.
How do we get started?
Again, its a fairly simple. With a minimum of say, 15-20 partners coming together, each putting in a modest sum, then Kamageo can develop a set of impactful marketing activities and be active within just a few weeks. Pleasingly, chances are, a senior member of our team will have visited and have a good working knowledgeable of your country already.
Want to know more?
Contact us for more ideas..and just a few weeks from now, your destination could be getting the kind of marketing support than it deserves....