What Businesses can learn from Tourism (and vice versa)

In preparation for work with a couple of clients in the past fortnight I’ve had to throw myself into substantially more ‘tourist’ style activities than I have for quite some time in an attempt to answer the following question: ‘How do we get more people to come here?’ Yes there’s a lot of fun to be had allowing yourself to experience the delights of the snow, or a concert or a day trip or even a restaurant (with some more work coming up in the next week) – things not normally on my list of actions given the usual workstyle of research and facilitation. And there’s some general clues that I’m happy to share with everyone

Businesses will benefit from seeing their business as a tourist destination that people will want to come back and visit, rather than as an organisation that just ‘flogs product’ or provides services.

Tourism operators will benefit from working on the lasting memories post visit, and less on the ‘sugar hits’ that many push to the marketplace now.

And both businesses and tourist operators need to appreciate the shifting nature of consumer intentions – there has been a VERY significant change in the way in which potential customers are making their decisions and it has almost NOTHING to do with finances! The emergence of connection to an event and to a business has shifted away from the brand approach (although it is still a valid model for many customers) and toward a self shaped experience. Simply put, more customers want to work with the business to determine the end product offering.

My views might change once I’ve completed the reseach in the middle of the next week, and I’d be surprised if, based on what I’ve seen so far, that happens!