Digital Marketing Plan for Caesar’s Soul Surftrips

This thesis is a product-based marketing plan for a commissioner company in Lima, Peru. This thesis is created based on tourism management studies. Thus, the viewpoint is based on the tourism industry and its characteristics. Moreover, the commissioner is a provider of travel and tourism products: surf trips and surf lessons. The commissioner employs one person, the owner. The company was created around the owner’s lifestyle – surfing. Until the Covid-19 pandemic, the company has been doing just face- to-face marketing on the beaches and cooperating with some hostels in nearby locations in Lima. Since the pandemic and strict restrictions in Peru, the owner realized that they need to change the approach to marketing since everything sifted online. Therefore, this marketing plan was the first step toward strategical digital marketing of the commissioner company. The thesis includes theoretical and empirical parts. The theoretical part answers the following questions: 1) What are the main pillars of creating a digital marketing plan for small businesses in the travel and tourism sector? 2) Why is it important to create a digital marketing plan? The theoretical part is the foundation for this digital marketing plan. The first theoretical part is introducing the main characteristics of digital marketing. The second theoretical part is introducing the business environment of the commissioner. For the empirical part, three ideal customer personas for every group were created. These are based on an interview with the company owner, an interview with three potential customers, and Adventure Travel Trade Association study in 2017 about potential surf travelers in Peru. The final product of this thesis is a step-by-step marketing plan booklet for the commissioner company. This booklet can be used in the future to update the commissioner's marketing plan. The thesis was spread from autumn 2021 until spring 2022. Processing the theory took the longest time whereas the booklet itself was created within the last months