Introduction
This chapter introduces the pivotal concept of tourism product market as a key to understanding contemporary tourist marketing. This chapter begins with a discussion of tourist product, stressing that a contemporary approach to tourism products recognizes that the tourism consumer is a co-producer of product, delivering a marketing approach that allows interaction with the tourist in a continuous process. A contemporary approach is to engineer experiences as tourism products, appealing to the “post-tourist” marker and delivering memorable engaging tourism experience that transform the visitor. This chapter then considers tourism markets and how consumer behavior is changing. It is clear that to reach and understand these new markets demands deep and meaningful research and contemporary approaches to market segmentation. The main message of this chapter is the tourism products and markets are inextricably linked. The chapter introduces the concept of tourism product markets to provide a framework for the interaction of buyers and sellers in tourism. Tourism product markets allow the clear definition of tourism products and the boundaries between them. Finally, this chapter examines the nature of the continuous exchanges and interaction in tourism product markets and the response of marketers to the challenges that these present.