Blue Ribbon is the world's emerging leading tourism group. The broad portfolio gathered under the Group umbrella consists of strong tour operators, 300 travel agencies mostly in Asia, Africa, USA, and UK, and 5 cruise liners. The group is aggressively planning to have many incoming agencies in all major holiday destinations around the globe. The group long time wish is to enter the European market. Europe is highly enriched due to its cultural and vibrant diversity significance. At the same time the European market is also known for its competitiveness, hence need ample resources to get successful in the market. Blue Ribbon knows that most of the Europeans travel inside Europe and very few travel to other countries. Whereas, most Americans are much fond of European travelling. The marketing team of Blue Ribbon has studied all European countries and thereby identified Rome and Barcelona as the most favourite travel destination among Europeans and other foreigners including UK, US, Canada, South and Central/ South American residents. 

Background and Introduction

John Lewis is the marketing director of the group and working for the last 20 years with Blue Ribbon group. He is academically and practically a very smart individual. He knows the value of the true marketing insights specially while designing marketing strategies. He believes in value creation for the customers and always like to ensure that no effort would get spared in making the customers delighted. John knows that there are multiple factors involved in the decision making of a customer for selecting a travel destination. However, today's marketing environment has challenged the big firms even while trying to sustain their customer base and healthy relationships. Since the inception of digitalization much of the marketing focus has been shifted to it. Nowadays, marketers use all sort of media platforms to engage both- existing and potential customers.

John is much eager to know the changing needs of the travellers in respect to today's dynamic environment. He has recently completed few digital marketing certificate courses to keep himself breast ahead about the most prevailed trends. During certificate courses he came across quite interesting findings that enveloped with new decision making facts of the customers. In marketing, both rational and emotional decision making by the customers has a unique and distinctive value. Before the recent inclusiveness of online social media platforms, marketing activities were mostly designed based on the retrieved insights through conventional methods of data collection. However, now it is pertinent to realize the social media impact on the customer's decision making. On average, the consumers are spending between 6-7 hours in a day on different platforms of social media i.e. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram etc.

Action Plan

Most of the businesses have shifted their customer engagement activities online, John is of opinion to focus much on that, as well. Moreover he believes that since travelling is all about exploring and discovering new places, social media posts especially those are on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn play very important role in shaping up favourable intentions of customers for any travel destination.

John called his whole marketing team for a meeting and after having an extensive brain storming sessions, he had decided to kick up the selection of new business hubs in Europe through marketing intelligence. Namely, Rome (Italy) and Barcelona (Spain) is selected by John due to being most vibrant and visited cities in the central European part.

Moreover, he has done some initial screening of 100 videos and finally select 4 videos of each destination. His marketing plan is starting with an assessment of the customers' appeal that videos are having.

Objective

John wants to establish the selection of its marketing strategies based on real insights. He has a plan to exclusively introduce Blue Ribbon travel videos those enhances the increase in air travel for Blue Ribbon, Cruise ship, hotel accommodation those offered by Blue Ribbon, and food available in Blue Ribbon restaurants in both Rome and Barcelona.

QUESTION - WHAT IS THE ENTRY MODE AND FOREIGN PARTNER SELECTION???