This was the most common way I was greeted by the hawkers outside every tourist attraction, from Luxor to Aswan.

What happened after that, varied with every encounter.

They have all developed their individual ways of trying to separate you from your money.

Some are humorous and charming, while others are persistent and annoying.

A bit like being tied to a chair and forced to watch thirty minutes non stop of Harvey Norman ads.

What is also common to the hawkers, is the unwavering optimism they have, that they will make a sale and it will be from you.

This optimism turns from frustration to desperation as the backside of last tourist disappears up the steps of the tour bus.

I think we are all over the constant hassle but it’s easy forget that this is how they put falafel on the table.

And with tourism running at about 62% of what it was before the revolution, their desperation is understandable.

There is a belief in advertising to always try and make a positive claim about your product. That’s not a bad thing, if your claim has a consumer benefit like strongest, safest or most reliable.

However a number of brands, having achieved market leader status, rely on being ‘biggest’ for their claim.

They forgot what got them there and just reflected on their achievements, in the belief that this is important to the consumer.

The trouble with this strategy is that sooner or later their position at the top of the ‘biggest’ tree will be challenged by someone else.

Then they become second biggest and who wants to be in second place?

Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, boasts a lot of ‘biggest’ things.

The world’s biggest indoor ski slope.

The world’s biggest indoor aquarium with the world’s largest acrylic viewing window.

The world’s largest shopping mall. In fact Dubai will soon have five of the seven biggest shopping malls in the world.

And of course, they have the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building.

In marketing terms this strategy might doom them to a certain fall. But their ‘biggest’ positioning has also become their strategy.

When you build a city out of the desert, on an area that 60 years ago had little more than a few houses, camels and date palms you need to do something spectacular.

When oil was discovered in 1966 the then ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Rashid, used the money to start a development program that would eventually lead to modern day Dubai.

They needed a city that would attract attention and investment from all over the world.

Their way of creating a unique product was to go with a strategy of ‘big’

They didn’t become big and then fall back on that, they started off with the idea to be big.

The entire city is a work in progress, building bigger and bigger things. I wonder how long this race to collect the most Guinness world records can last?

 

There are two seafood BBQ restaurants on the outskirts of Tekek on Tioman Island.

We have been there twice and both times one was crowded and the other empty.

There appears to be no real difference between the two.

Normally it would come down to reputation and repeat business. However in this instance the patrons are predominately tourists and are only on Tioman for a few days at a time.

I put it down to symbolism.

The guy hovering over the hot coals, at the popular spot, has a hat and it’s a very symbolic hat.

So much for blogging about globalised advertising and marketing.

I have just witnessed, first hand, what a lack of marketing to can do for a tourist’s experience.

I am currently on Tioman Island, a small pearl shaped dot off the east coast of Malaysia, in the South China sea.

It’s marketed as an unspoiled paradise.

Admittedly this is the off season but so far it has lived up to the spin. There are no touts and no pressure to buy this or do that.

What has amazed us most is the way the animals cohabitate with the locals, and the tourist.

Apart from the numerous birds and butterflies there are somewhat larger critters like giant monitor lizards and families of monkeys.

What is so surprising about Tioman is that these animals are very happy to respect your right to be there if you just let them be.

This is in stark contrast to places like Bali, where the locals have made the monkeys so dependent on food, sold to the tourists, that the they have become a pest. The Bali monkeys have become so aggressive that people are now too scared to visit some of the original tourist attractions that made the island so famous.

The fauna isn’t the only inhabitant of Bali that is discouraging the tourists, the locals are doing a great job as well.

Touting on the beaches, in the bars and on the sidewalk has become so aggressive that many people are put off returning to what was once the paradise of South East Asia.

The over marketing, of the natural and human resources, has lead to a devaluation of what was the original attraction.