Integrated marketing communications in high-quality hotels of central and southern Dalmatia: a study from the perspective of managers and guests

Although the implementation of Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) has been studied in different contexts and countries all over the world, further contributions are needed to consolidate the concept. Little research has been done on the integration of marketing communications in tourism-related sectors. Moreover, previous studies have focused mainly on managers’ opinions while overlooking consumers’ perceptions of IMC. The purpose of this research is to study in greater detail the IMC concept in the tourism sector, specifically in the hotels of Central and Southern Dalmatia, from a double perspective: managers-guests. Therefore, managers of 15 high-quality hotels and 118 guests were interviewed during April and May 2010. The results of descriptive statistical analysis showed a high degree of IMC implementation in hotels and a high degree of guests’ perceptions of IMC. However, the Mann-Whitney U test revealed small but significant differences between managers’ and guests’ perceptions of some of the IMC items. The findings of this study are expected to provide useful information to hotel managers, who deal with an increasingly competitive marketplace where traditional marketing approaches are no longer sufficient to differentiate themselves from their competitors. Thus, IMC should be considered as a new approach which might enable hotels to gain competitive advantages.