ÚTJELZŐ TÁBLÁTÓL A BARNA TÁBLÁIG: A ZALAKAROSI FÜRDŐ KEZDETI REKLÁMKOMMUNIKÁCIÓJA

Abstract

Retrospection is given through presenting the advertising communication activities of a
greenfield investment project of the socialist times, of the spa in Zalakaros, which opened its
gates to visitors in 1965; by examining how the tools and contents of communication evolved
in the socialist era that flatly dismissed the existence of the market – and therefore the need for
marketing -, and how all these were influenced by the ever expanding catchment area and range
of services of the spa and the infrastructure and suprastructure of tourism in Zalakaros.
The new service, which was independent of the seasons and was introduced upon the advent of
the indoor spa in 1975, became the attraction that could already be communicated even abroad
and marked the beginning of active international tourism. The ever widening set of products
started to take root and the clientele expanded, yet communication remained one-sided, and, in
the absence of feedback and analyses, could not be considered as a real marketing activity.
Marketing in its classical sense appeared in 1991 when product development for a segmented
market was introduced too. A development trajectory can be traced in communication: from
the first road sign indicating the spa, and paper-based communication tools (brochures,
newspaper articles, advertisements followed by local and regional guidebooks) to first featuring
in Magyar Filmhíradó (Hungarian Newsreel) then in various television news programmes and
gaining ground in the gradually expanding electronic communication. In the Hungarian
Highway Code the brown tourist sign marking out sites of national significance was yet another
step forward while, almost simultaneously, access to the Internet became widespread. The
paper-based and electronic communication activities, running in parallel, increasingly shifted
in favour of the latter, and due to its accelerated headway, electronic communication has
become almost absolute by now.