Tourism distribution channel is a system of intermediaries or middleman that facilitates the sale and delivery of tourism services from suppliers to consumers (Buhalis and Law, 2001). Distribution channels can serve as part of the marketing mix that can makes the products available to consumers as the link between suppliers of tourism products and their end consumers, as well as the bridge between supply and demand (Kracht and Wang, 2010). This shows that, important to have a good distribution channel strategies to ensure information of the destination will be distribute aggressively.
Pulau Meranti Lake is one of the potentially lake to be developed and promote as one of the tourism attraction. This lake situated at Puchong, nearby Sepang, Putrajaya and Cyberjaya. Pulau Meranti Lake has an abundance of rural land and plentiful of water resources. This two combination will create the potential for significance economic development and help it to become one of the best lakes for water based activity tourism.
Changing on consumers preferences have expanded the range of channels that tourism suppliers might use to distribute their products and multi – channels distribution is now are common.Each channel or path to the market may appeal to different segments, suit some products more than others suit, and have a simple or complex structure. Somewhat more slowly, distribution is also being acknowledged as a key part of revenue management. Returns can vary significantly from one channel to the next with each channel having its own set costs and benefits (Pearce, 2009). Having a good strategy will help new potential destination like Pulau Meranti Lake to be expose, having marketing strategy will help suppliers knows opportunities or threats that might occur also the strength and weaknesses of Pulau Meranti Lake.There are several steps involved to developed distribution channel for Meranti Lake.
Identify Customers Needs and Selection Preference; Needs and wants of customers are varying for one market to other market. Suppliers need to do an observation on how to provide best information to the customers. In making their decision to visit one particular destination, customer needs information about the destinations, product available, services (example; transportation, accommodation), activities that offer and available at the destination.By provide this information clearly, it will help customer that interested to come to have some ideas about the Pulau Meranti Lake.
Identify the Functions to be Performed to Meet the Distribution Needs of the Customers; there are some key functions to be identified such as information provision. We need to provide adequate information to the customers not only in the right place but also in the right time. Other than that, we need to consider on either to combine various elements such as accommodation, transportation or activities together.The most important steps are to decide marketing mix on Pulau Meranti Lake.
Most of tourism supplier might require several marketing channel in order to cater a different types of customers and to wider the information to the customer. There are some questions needs to be answer by suppliers like on what are the best marketing mix that can be use and which are the best partner to be collaboration to make sure this potential destination are success. In case of Pulau Meranti Lake, we will use four P’s as our distribution channels strategy. i. ProductPulau Meranti Lake offers a water based activity tourism to the tourists.
The combinations of sports, entertainment and relaxing place. There are many activities that tourists can do at Pulau Meranti Lake such as boating, water skiing, kayaking, jet skiing, and great fishing. Other than that, Pulau Meranti Lake also offer land activities such as cycling. Beside many activities offering, Pulau Meranti also provides lodging such as floating chalets to the tourist who like to stay and for those like to camping, Pulau Meranti Lake provide an empty places for them.Other than that, there is one restaurant that implements open kitchen style to cater female tourists. Our restaurant concept will collaboration with Pak Engku, founder of Kuzie Catering, which is Pak Engku will managed the restaurant.
Our restaurant also will give chance to women tourist by provide them an activities such as cooking class with our chefs on every weekend. ii. Price Some of our target markets are youth, working family, local communities, retired couples and lake enthusiast.We will offer affordable price to ensure we can attract more visitors to come and enjoy activities that provided at the lake.
There are special price for schoolchildren, university students and senior citizen. We offer different price for student because we would like to make sure that they will come and enjoy our activities and at the same time will help government to decrease social problems and make sure that this young generation have some place for them to do their activities and not wasting their time. iii. PlacePulau Meranti Lake is strategic.
This lake located between Putrajaya and Kuala Lumpur. It connected efficiently and effectively. Approximately, it takes about 15 minutes from Putrajaya and 30 minutes from Subang Jaya. Somehow, we will do collaboration with developers around Pulau Meranti Lake such as LBS Bina Group Berhad to construct alternatives entrance to make it easier for tourist to come. Besides that, there are important to have easy access from highway and make tourist alert about the signage to the lake from the highways.
In this situation, we will collaboration with Lingkaran Trans Kota Sdn Bhd or better known as LITRAK, concessionaire of Lebuhraya Damansarsa Puchong (LDP). The LDP is the instant and vital link to many tourist attraction and places of interest. Easy access will encourage more tourists to come and enjoy the activity provided by us. Other than that, we also will collaborate with Rangkaian Pengangkutan Integrasi Deras Sdn Bhd (RapidKL) to list Pulau Meranti Lake in one of their routes every day. With this collaboration, Pulau Meranti Lake can be easily access via road transportation such as bus and car.
v. Promotion This is one of the important part which is it has required the best combination to maximize the information distribution to the potential visitors. We will design an informative brochure that includes all the information such as activities, lodging and transportation, picture and map for visitors. We will also organize this brochure to be put at RapidKL counter and distribute it to highway users (such as LDP) by having a partnership with them.
This partnership will give us an advantage to highlight Pulau Meranti Lake in RapidKL brochure.Other than that, printed media such as magazine also will be use. We choose Karangkraf as our partner. Karangkraf offer various type of magazine that caters for different segment.
“LIBUR” is one of the magazines that we want to collaborate, which is this magazine are the first travel magazine in Bahasa Malaysia that provide international and local travel destinations. This magazine provides and informative information on the local and international travel scene for local readers, where to stay, dine and shop.One of activities that our offers are fishing, in order to attract fishing lovers we choose to advertise our lake in “UMPAN”, one of the magazine for fishing enthusiast. Information technology becomes one of the effective tools nowadays. This promotion tools has their own target market especially young generation. In order to attract this type of market segment, we will create a website for Pulau Meranti Lake.
This website will have information of lake administration such as phone numbers, address, map and all information needed.We also will make sure our website is user friendly in order to make the information available directly on the website instead of going through several different links. Others marketing strategies that we plan to do is partnership with local, state and federal programs or agencies. We will try to organize Fishing Tournament every year.
This programmed need us to do collaboration with local council, Majlis Perbandaran Sepang to promote our program. Besides that, this programmed also need us to strengthen our partnership with fishing department for stocking fishing to the lake.Regular monitoring and evaluation needed to ensure that marketing mix that has been chosen meet customers’ needs and wants. From business perspective, distribution channel not only to promote the product but also to generate income for the company. The project to transform Pulau Meranti Lake to Recreational Lake Tourism will be beneficial to not only the local council and local people, but it also can help us to prevent our environment and at the same time, economic and social development also will be beneficial.
Reference Buhalis, D. and Laws, E. (2001), Tourism Distribution Channels: Practices, Issues and Transformation, Continuum, London Pearce, D. G.
(2009). Channel Design for Effective Tourism Distribution Strategies. Journal of Travel & Tourism Marketing, 26, 507 - 521. doi:10. 1080/10548400903163046 Kracht, J.
and Wang, Y. (2010). Examining the Tourism Distribution Channel: Evolution and Transformation. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 22(5), 736 - 757. doi:10.
1108/09596111011053837
