Summary:

Your destination may have a large offer in terms of attractions and activities, and you might be tempted to promote everything. But while every one of these assets adds value to your destination, they are not necessarily going to motivate travel to your destination. Focus on the iconic attractions, activities, hidden gems, and local secrets that best speak to your visitors’ interests and passions. This will benefit everyone in the region through increased visitation, length of stays, and spending. Be specific in your assessment. Avoid the generic list with museums, hiking trails, boat tours, etc; try to identify the specific opportunity by name, what is included in the experience, and what makes it special.

Step 1:

First of all, it is necessary to know the destination’s demand generators. These are unique or appealing assets that translate into a reason to visit. Find and list the attractions, activities, and things to see and do in the region that are the primary motivator for a visitor to travel to that region (film festivals, cultural events or symbolic monuments or museums for example).

Step 2:

Secondly, seek the destination’s demand supporters. Each destination has unique features, strengths, and opportunities to build upon. Some attractions, activities, and things to see and do may not motivate a visitor to come to your region but contribute to the overall appeal of the destination and can be added to a visitor’s itinerary (such as community attractions, sightseeing tours, specialty shopping etc.).There are some of the things in your region that you value but may not be part of the tourism offering of your destination, such as a local musician, storyteller, artisan, or expert on a particular subject may provide the opportunity for visitors to learn something new, have exclusive access, or meet local people. These are the hidden gems of your destination and might be the added-value a visitor is looking for in his vacation.

Step 3:

In the end, you have to be sure that the demand generators, demand supporters, and hidden gems you found fit in with the destination’s brand and core experiences. Offer an experience that has nothing to do with the vision, the goals and the core experiences of the destination keeps you out of the destination global offer. Remember that visitors choose a destination for its specific characteristics

Summary:

SMEs that succeed in crafting and delivering experiential travels develop a long-term competitive advantage. But developing creative experiences requires a shift in the approach, the plan and the communication; you have to look at your community and the reasons why people choose your destination and determining when and where your offer can fit during the vacation.

Step 1:

Know your customers and your destination assets: meeting the demand that looks for creative experiences requires a deep understanding of your target customers and markets. Understanding your perfect customers goes beyond the classic and general data you can raise, such as age, life stage, income, things they like to do, length of stay, how they plan their trips and how they book. To get a competitive advantage, it is fundamental to analyze and seek for what it is important to your customers, and what they value before purchasing an experience and why they choose your company. This information can then be used to craft more creative and tailor-made experiences and plan a more precise marketing communication. Targeting the right customers with the right offers, enables you to save time and money.

Step 2

Think about the types of experiences that meet the demand needs and wants: the trend of “living like a local” is growing fast and more and more tourists look and ask for it to be introduced straight to the lifestyle and the atmosphere of the place; he creative industries have a fundamental role in providing what tourists want and look for. The goods and services that have traditionally been part of the local economy can become new sources and opportunities for visitors to:

• Learn – a new skill, about who we are and how we live, or to challenge themselves
• Do – be a hands-on participant in the activity not a passive observer
• Be Local – by meeting and engaging with people who are interested in sharing our local culture, practices and way of life or a particular skill they may have

Step 3

Plan the experience: Look around what your community can offer to your business and write down a list of  people, places and activities that make your destination unique and distinctive: remember that's different from a list of “tourism assets” (e.g. two museums, three festivals or temporary exhibitions, 10 B&B). Assess if there is any core element that every visitor must experience and then compose your offer thinking about and selecting the kind of experiences and creative assets that can match both your business, both your identity both your customer.

Summary:

Creative tourists want an experience, a particular authentic experience, designed to stimulate their interests. Whether you know it or not, every place is unique and can offer creative product that tourists want. Every community has a great wealth of artistic people and places. Creative tourism has the potential to draw on local skills, expertise and traditions from many areas.

Step 1:

It is important to begin with an honest appraisal of a community’s assets and identify the unifying themes. This is the starting point from which cultural and heritage tourism destinations are built.

You research to explore your local treasure and build this up to be precious content, finding a unique plot which could come from local history, local characters, buildings, industries, traditions, natural assets, events and anything else that makes your community unique.

Step 2:

From all community treasures, look for highlighted plots finding links between themes, historical periods, and characters and other resources to find extraordinary stories to tell. It is important at this stage to come to your top 3 picks. You could revisit the 10 core principles and re-assess the potentiality of each idea.

Step 3:

At this point, you need to unleash the power of creativity. It may be a good idea to bring in some professional expertise to help you assess what will be most attractive to people from outside your community. People from outside your community could help open up new perspectives; talking with people outside of the tourism circle allows different perspectives to emerge for interesting suggestions, refine your innovation and set-up new kind of networks with partners you’ve never taken into account before. Bringing in someone with marketing expertise at this early stage of your invention is extremely encouraging because creative tourism activities should be designed to either capture or fashion market needs and wants.

Summary:

When you are developing a creative experience, setting-up your goals is an essential step. It helps in taking decisions and developing strategies for the success of your business. Extending the stays at your accommodation, the length of visit to your attraction or destination, improving the yield per customer, encouraging mid-week visitation or diversifying your market are just some examples of the goals you might have for your business.

Step 1

Whatever your business goals are, try to make them measurable. For example, a measurable goal might be a new experience opportunity that will increase my mid-week visitation by 5% for the May-October period. A measurable goal, like this one, lets you know when you’ve been successful. At the end of your pilot period you can determine whether or not your mid-week visitation increased.

Step 2

Layer on market information. For example: To create one new experience opportunity – a wine tasting-themed experience – targeted to the destination market, which will increase my mid-week visitation by 4% for the April-November period. This goal will help you focus your experience development and marketing efforts. Because you know the destination market is interested in wine-tasting activities, so elements of your experience should reflect this theme.

Summary:

Meeting the demand for creative travels requires a deep research and understanding of who your target markets are and the best customers within each market. There are many ways to find and collect the information you need to outline the profile of your perfect customer. Market researches are a useful tool, but you, your employees or co-workers and your customers’ feedbacks are important sources as well. Understanding your perfect customers is not just about the age, life stage, income, things they like to do, length of stay, how they plan their trips and how they book. Outlining a clear profile of your perfect guest goes beyond.

Step 1:

Write down a list of the characteristics of the guests that can match with your offer and the kind of customer you would like to have. This list is a basic outline that you have to integrate with the elements that are important to your target customer.

Step 2

Ask questions that will help and support your understanding and research of what is important to your customers and what they take into account when they purchase an experience offered by your company. Then, ask yourself if you already have or can create a product that offers something special to our ideal guests or who you can partner with to develop and deliver the types of experiences our travelers are seeking.

Step 3

Use this information to craft more meaningful and tailored experiences and address your marketing and communication strategy more precisely. By doing this you save time and money, because you’re targeting the right people with the right offers.