Each year, millions of individuals spend billions of dollars vacationing and
traveling for business and pleasure; when the trip is over, nothing tangible remains.
To more clearly reflect the role of service industries, such as the hospitality
and tourism industry, the definition of marketing can be expanded to
include references to services. This will eliminate the confusion caused by the
semantic differences between products, goods, and services, discussed earlier.
According to the American Marketing Association, “marketing is the process
of planning and executing the conception, pricing, promotion, and distribution
of ideas, goods, and services to create exchanges that satisfy individual
and organizational goals.”1