Unique Selling Propositions in Tourism

The 'unique selling proposition' (USP) is a marketing idea that gained popularity among both academicians and practitioners, at least since the 1950's. Marketers knew for long that it is not enough to differentiate; equally important it is to propositionalize the basis of differentiation. The television advertising guru Rosser Reeves called for advertisements to be reflective of this and coined the term USP. Since then, marketing based on the USP concept has become ever popular. Just like various other industries, various tourism destination promotional campaigns began to highlight USPs that make these destinations distinct and different. However, scholarly investigations about the development or management of these campaigns remained very limited. This research is aimed to fill this gap.