Crisis Management and “Turkey Home Campaign”
In a constantly-changing world, a destination
is expected to monitor and develop its image to keep being attractive for
visitors, investors, entrepreneurs as well as its own inhabitants. A fair
number of places have been experiencing a branding process that creates added
values rather than maintaining conventional marketing.
The world-wide campaign, launched under
the title of “Turkey Home” by the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism in
2014, came to life with help of an extensive knowledge that sprang out of
experiences gained till then, from workshops organized between the relevant
sectors and the academic circles as well as out of researches focusing on perception-image
aspects. “Tulip”, one of the symbols in Turkey that was first used by as a
means of promotion at the turn of the new millennium has sustained to be the
logo, this time, for this global campaign and Turkey brought into play the
sympathy and attraction it won till then. No slogan has been used during the
campaign that strives to communicate Turkey’s tangible and intangible values
and assets to the rest of the world under the concept of “Home of”. The
campaign has also given particular importance to the goals that come with branding
reviews and tourism diplomacy.
It goes without saying how significant
crisis management can be for destination branding and destination image. As the
sum of the strategies, responses and works designed to help deal with periods
of crisis, crisis management requires;
Completely accepting
there is an ongoing crisis and taking moderate measures to eliminate it,
When hit by an image crisis, sometimes the
best way to cope with it is to remove the causing circumstances. When Turkey
faced a failed coup attempt in 2016 and experienced a series of terrorist
attacks, it had to struggle with the image crisis it was inflicted and fight
directly against different terrorist groups inside and outside of its
boundaries. By doing so, it showed great determination to eliminate the cause
of the problem the whole country came face to face with. Now, the hard efforts are
bringing back a country that has successfully fought terror, regained
confidence as a destination of tourism and put the Turkish tourism economy on an
upscaling track. Turkey achieved in 2017 to increase its tourist number by 30%
when compared to 2016.
Hosting well-known
organizations in sports, culture and arts
The best elements to stop experiencing
image-related problems with tourist destinations especially during vulnerable
times are again the cultural, art and sport organizations. Turkey Home Campaign,
with this in mind, has stepped up its activities locally and internationally.
Turkey put tremendous efforts in bringing the Euro league finals to Istanbul
and made it to become the destination partner to this world-famous
organization. Turkey, taking part as a guest country in
internationally-acclaimed gastronomic festivals such as San Sebastian
Gastronomika and Taste of London, made itself widely known in the world of
gastronomy tourism. Other well-appreciated organizations like Istanbul Bienali,
Contemporary Istanbul, and Istanbul Art Week that take place in Turkey are
events we gladly contribute to. Turkey has also participated in the street
festivals organized abroad to build a direct communication and interaction with
other countries under this campaign, thereby highlighting its positive
contributions to the products and destinations it offers. One of the best
examples that stand out the public-private cooperation in this field is the Turkey
Festival in Russia. Held in Moscow’s Krasnaya Presnya Park on 16-18 June 2017,
the festival welcomed over 150.000 guests, marking a noteworthy success.
Welcoming opinion
leaders in Turkey
As did in the past years, Turkey is still
welcoming opinion leaders from all over the world through its own means or
those provided by the private sector. (Please visit www.tanitma.gov.tr
for the press images from the fam-trips and hosting activities of 2016 and
2017)
Promoting a
destination via movies, TV and books
The promotions for Turkish movies continue
abroad under this successful campaign. The Turkish soap operas have become very
popular in various regions. They are playing a considerable role in evoking an
interest for the Turkish language and carrying Turkey’s image-building works to
a higher dimension. Our Ministry’s efforts made Cappadocia the subject of an
animation film named “Tadeo Jones”. Produced by Spain and released in August
2017, this movie already met 4 million movie-goers in theatres. Also available
on DVD, “Tadeo Jones” is still being shown in movies of many other countries.
A marketing campaign alone is not enough,
however. Aside from activities conducted under a certain campaign, a
destination that focuses on image rebuilding should communicate with local
leaders, investors and companies. Public Relations and advertising campaigns
may be important; however, they cannot substitute for the interaction built
with entrepreneurs, travel agencies and tour operators. It is highly important
to deliver the same message throughout the campaign. Price reductions, charter
incentives, insurance funding and such other steps would help a tourist
destination in image crisis recover. The delegations headed by the Turkish
Culture and Tourism Ministers on duty and joined by private sector
representatives made countless contacts, meetings, informing gatherings and
press conferences inside and outside of Turkey. The sector-focused fairs and
expos, too, made great contributions to Turkey’s image-improving endeavours.
The contacts with tour operators were never suspended and joint projects were
produced to keep their confidence in Turkey at a high level. We carried out
joint advertising and marketing activities as well as fam-trips with about 70
tour operators that bring tourists to Turkey. Turkey extended the scope of a
$6,000 financial backing program for tour operators carrying tourists to the
country on a permanent basis.
Professional approach is a key to success.
First, relevant researches that help determine the current situation should be
conducted on the target mass. As in the case of Turkey, the contents of social
media were analysed and relevant situation analysis regarding Turkey’s Home
Campaign were performed.
The Internet and the social media are of
crucial importance in building communication with others in the modern world.
“Turkey Home Campaign” is continuously advancing our dialogue with people on
the social media. Maintaining a positive communication with millions of
individuals from different target markets, communities and age groups is an
issue we highly value during this process. The conventional media has a feature
to design and propagate the news across the globe. The social media has been
considerably used by tourism organizations because it provides an environment
where people directly have an access to information and dissemination of
organic contents is available. Touristic activities and holiday offers on the
social media ranks 3rd worldwide. This shows how influential the
social media is in the image and marketing of a place. Turkey Home Campaign has
become so powerful and effective that it’s now one of the top five promotional
campaigns in the world.
As the marketing- and promotion-related
index constructed within the scope of Global Data’s 2017 research concludes,
the Turkish tourism campaign ranks 6th among 20 countries in Europe.
It shows us how Turkey Home strategy went well. And we believe in the power of
culture and tourism diplomacy and communication
İrfan ÖNAL,
May 2018
General
Director of Promotion
REPUBLIC OF
TURKEY, MINISTRY OF CULTURE AND TOURISM
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