MARKETING COMMUNICATION IN THE VISIT PHASE THROUGH GUEST.NET - AN INDESTINATION, LOCATION-BASED SYSTEM AT MAISTRA HOTEL CHAIN IN CROATIA

Hoteliers have always endeavoured to retain guests within their facilities, to profit maximally by offering them additional services. Informing guests of various options is performed within in-house marketing techniques, whereas some are ICT based. Purpose. Hotel chain websites are aimed at the acquisition of guests and as such are inadequate for displaying detailed, service and current information that guests need during their stay in a tourist destination (e.g. happy hour offer at the lobby bar). What about information provided to guests once in the tourist destination? This paper will present one such solution: the Guest.net. It is an in-destination, location-based website accessible from all Maistra Inc. properties, representing a good solution for hotel chains with various nearby positioned tourism facilities aimed at retaining guests within chain facilities. Design/Methodology/Approach. The approach used in this paper is the case study method. Findings and Implications. Klante, Kroschel and Bolls theoretical information model (2004) was expanded by adding the planning in situ phase in tourism. Benefits of the application of similar guest services for hotel chains have been listed. Limitations. Limitations steam from the case study method and relate to the minor geographical area researched. Originality. There is an evident lack in research of customers in tourism during the visit phase, regarding their decision making process, especially in the evaluation of alternatives and their purchase decision in situ (Law, Buhalis, Cobanoglu, 2014), thus this paper broadens the identified gap in the information collection phase in the destination.