As tourism businesses get ready for the Summer season, many are also reflecting on just how bad last year was for them and how they can improve what they do. 

I recently visited a beautiful attraction which relies heavily on nature and a love of the outdoors. The owner has been thinking about how to increase profits and visitor numbers and reduce reliance on passing trade and sun. 

He was considering a major investment in an indoor play area. You know the sort of thing: vibrant colours, noisy children, masses of plastic. Many family-friendly attractions are opening similar facilities and he felt under pressure to consider doing the same. 

One of the phrases that stayed with me after reading James Caan's autobiography was "observe the masses, and do the opposite". This can take courage but is so often worthwhile. 

The plastic play area wouldn't be at all appropriate for his setting or business. It wouldn't really cater for his key target markets, and may even put off some of his older visitors who enjoy the calm environment. 

We talked about his passions and interests and it quickly became clear that there are many other angles to consider and new ideas we could put in place (I won't tell you here now - still secret), which would build on the owner's own knowledge, attract very specific markets and set this attraction apart from others. It will take courage to try something different - but the investment required for a major play centre would be larger and arguably take more courage. 

Back to the reason for thinking about this - how to mitigate against wet weather. If the attraction develops something completely new and different, something with clear target markets, we'll be able to attract higher spending pre-booked groups who will come regardless of the weather. We'll be able to extend the season and develop a new range of profitable products to sell alongside entrance tickets. We'll be focusing on profit, not just higher visitor numbers. And the owner will feel really comfortable with what he's doing, and able to invest more passion and enthusiasm in his own business. 

So before you spend a fortune to follow the crowd or do what you think people want, take a moment to think what you could do that's different, special and follows your heart. It takes courage to swim against the tide but when you do the rewards can be MUCH bigger. 

Promoting a market town with a tiny marketing budget is difficult but it's made easier if you can ride on current trends and use the power of word of mouth recommendations as Masham shows

Masham (home of The Tourism Network!) is an attractive market town in the Yorkshire Dales. Like many places in the Dales, there is a disproportionate number of holiday cottages and second homes. Masham is fortunate in that in addition to the two famous breweries, several pubs and excellent restaurant, it also has two butchers, a greengrocers, bakers, two delis, several galleries and a fantastic old-fashioned sweet shop. Locals support these shops but we also need visitors to use these facilities, to bring income into the area.

Instead, many visitors wrongly assume that there won’t be any shops in Masham and shop at major supermarkets before they arrive. They may not realise it, but by shopping in supermarkets visitors often pay more than they would in the Masham shops and miss out on the “experience” of a little banter with shop owners.

Live like a local

Last year, with a small amount of funding from North Yorkshire County Council, we decided to create a new publication that could be downloaded from holiday cottage websites or sent as a .pdf to holiday makers so they would know what to expect and perhaps think twice about shopping in advance. Part of the plan was to show visitors that shopping locally wasn’t simply to increase profits for retailers, but that they’d also get an insight into real life in Masham.

We were taking advantage of several tourism trends:

• visitors are looking for less official information, wanting to know more from an “insiders’perspective”
  
• word of mouth recommendations are highly prized
• visitors don’t want to be seen as visitors – they often like the idea of blending in and doing as locals do
• visitors don’t just want to look at things – they want to experience them at a deeper level. Being able to actually talk to local people and gets tips from them is welcomed.
• there’s a strong interest in what celebrities do – so we used the fact that some of them had shopped in Masham as an important endorsement!

The “Live like a local in Masham” guide was cheaply produced and looked deliberately homespun. We didn’t want visitors to see it as a glossy marketing activity. The idea was to make it feel like a direct communication from people living in Masham. We interviewed and took a photo of every retailer, pub and gallery owner in Masham.

We added two questions, one for PR effect – “any famous customers?” and one to encourage visitors to speak to shop owners “where’s your favourite place in and around Masham?”.

The budget was limited so we needed to find other ways of distributing the guide, preferably that didn’t involve too much printing. We did print out a few to sell in the Masham Community & Information Office. Interestingly many locals bought these and commented on how interesting they were to read. We also had a lot of examples of locals who said the guide had prompted them to ask for things they weren’t sure were on sale locally but which shop owners produced from their tardis-like stocks.

We printed off copies and put them in ring-binders and distributed them to the holiday cottages and other accommodation in Masham, as a reminder to visitors to shop locally once they were here. But most importantly, we provided a .pdf version for accommodation owners to add to their websites and send to visitors once they’d booked.

We also laminated the relevant sheet from the guide and took them round to each of the participating retailers, restaurants and pubs for them to display in their window. The idea here was both to entice visitors in and let them know a bit more about the owner so they could ask more questions about their favourite place so visitors would get more tips for ways to enjoy their holiday – and perhaps to prompt them to tell others and plan a repeat visit to Masham.

Feedback has been excellent and there are now plans for a second edition, with sponsorship from a local company. We also presented the idea at an Action for Market Towns meeting – community leaders in Pateley Bridge, Hawes and Leyburn have since produced similar publications, each with their own twist but based on this simple idea. 

Bread and water may not sound like the most obvious tourism offering from Switzerland but that’s exactly what one company offers. Not sure why, but I like it!

Called "breadandwater", it’s a great example of someone spotting a trend, and offering an unusual product to take advantage of that trend.

In essence, they offer a “get away from it all” experience for anyone who is burnt out or needs to escape for a while and who wants to get closer to nature and experience rural Swiss life at firsthand. The very basic accommodation they offer (ranging from an old cow byre to semi-derelict mountain huts) isn’t presented just as a cheap option but as a more authentic way of experiencing the countryside. Facilities are very basic, more akin to camping.

They also have another unusual idea. If you want to stay somewhere a little more comfortable, you can rent a temporary room in an old folks home (no age limit) which presumably generates income for the home and gives the residents some one new to talk to, with the guest benefitting from plenty of local knowledge from people who really know the area.