P/FC/11. Dissertation. Marketing literary Places at Tourism destinations: A Study of Sherlock Holmes Museum and Shakespeare's Globe Theatre

Cultural has been defined as very important attraction for tourism worldwide. Literature is one of the important types of cultural tourism. The UK has a long history of literature and there are many famous literary places such as Shakespeare's hometown and Lake District. The literary tour operators try to make both commercial and social benefit through developing tourism at the literary sites. However tourists' motivation towards the literary places is quite complex and the literary tourism organizations face competitive market as well. Because the tourism products at literary places are specific the appropriate marketing strategy is vital to a long-term successful development of these sites. A market research has been taken at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre and Sherlock Holmes Museum, London. The self-completion questionnaires are distributed at the literary places and some face-to-face interviews have been carried out as well. This research tries to explore the motivations and the satisfaction levels of tourists at literary places. To check the effects of literary tourism marketing is one of the targets as well. Through the analysis on collected data we can draw some basic issues of literary places marketing practice. To have a careful market segment is essential to make the decisions on marketing plan. Furthermore, the marketers need to make full understanding of the possible marketing products at literary places. To develop the advantages of literary tourism products-the writer's heritage and their literary images, marketers will use the combination of multiple marketing tools to promote the images and the brand of literary places over potential visitor groups. Advertisement via printed material, packaged tour programmes and joint promotion with other cultural tourism sectors will be helpful to attract the target visitor groups. Moreover, the literary tour operators should always focus on how to meet the visitors' literary imaginations during their trip.