Ideas

Pre-Covid, celebrations were a major trend. There was a significant increase in visitors meeting up with friends and relatives for a celebration of some kind, often a big birthday or anniversary. Celebrations are a great market. They often take place outside the main season. One person invites others to come along, so you can attract new visitors, and people are generally in a good mood and ready to spend!

There's now even greater demand as people try to catch up on all the celebrations they mi…

If your marketing budget is tiny (I don’t know any tourism businesses with a big budget!), it’s easier to stand out from the competition if you focus on being different or special in some way.

How about being so special and different, you’re the ‘one and only'? 

It’s easier than you might think.

You can choose a ‘category’ and be the king/queen of that category. Here’s how. It works equally well no matter what type of tourism business you run. 

Let’s say you run a self-catering holiday cotta…

There's a growing trend that you may have missed. You might even say it arrived by cover of the night...

It's a trend that could be valuable to accommodation businesses, food and drink outlets, activity providers and attractions. 

After dark activities

Visitors are increasingly interested in what they can do after dark. They're ready to have new and different experiences after dark. This could be nature-spotting or enjoying the dark skies. It could be sitting outside with a rug over their lap…

There's a row of images, or series of short films.

Each one shows something going wrong in the world, or is a shouty message 'this person is terrible', or a photo of something horrible or bad. There's just one that shows the green shoots of daffodil stems, and grass starting to grow again. 

Another row of images has a similar bank of negative images. There's one that feels different: a sunrise, full of promise and light. 

Which of these images are you most drawn to? 

Positive stories and im…

When your marketing budget is limited, there's an easy way to add power to your promotions: piggyback. Piggyback marketing essentially means using someone else's marketing budget to benefit your business. 

Obviously I don't mean actually using their money, but rather harnessing the power of their activity and piggybacking on the awareness they're able to create. It's a bit like riding in the slipstream of a more powerful vehicle. 

Read on for some ideas for current trends you can easily piggyb…

There's a Japanese expression and approach that many Western business leaders have started to use: Kaizen*. I think it's also invaluable for small tourism business, especially those with tiny marketing budgets and no time.

The Kaizen approach is based on the idea that small continuous steps and tweaks build up to more substantial improvements over time.

Kaizen is good news for all of us for three reasons:

1. Small steps are easier, especially when you don't have a lot of time;

2. It costs practicall…

Do you sometimes struggle to think of good things to post on social media? It can be hard to try to find different ways of saying "Look at my business, come and visit!" without boring people or feeling like you're being too pushy (you're not!).

Here are some different types of social media posts you can use to promote your business, engage visitors and make your feed more interesting. Using a combination of these will help build engagement and followers. But don't forget to do numbers 6 and 10 …

Ever feel some things are just too big to deal with?

You know it’s important but it just feels too big to tackle? Sometimes it’s something like redecorating – you know it needs doing but can’t face all the upheaval. Or you’ve got a new phone and know it’s got all kinds of clever functions but there’s never a good time to learn what to do. Climate change is a whole other level of daunting. What can one person do that’s ever going to make any difference?

Whatever the daunting challenge you’re f…

Would you like visitors to recommend your business? To write positive reviews about it? To really spread the word about what you do? 

If you do a good job, there's a strong chance people will tell others. They may even do so on social media, potentially informing hundreds or even thousands more people. 

But there's only a chance they'll do that. it's likely, but not guaranteed. 

What if you could increase the chance? To make it more likely that people will remember you and actively want to te…