3 Minute Read: “WORLD TOURISM DAY” Today is World Tourism Day, 2024, with the WTO theme of ‘TOURISM & PEACE.’ But here in The Business of Pleasure, we believe that Travel (Trade) broadens the (Sales and Marketing) Mind so this year, as every year, we celebrate the slightly less ambitious: ‘TOURISM & REVENUE GENERATION.’
Broadly speaking, there are 3 main reasons for chasing the tourist Dollar, Euro and Yen,
1) The ‘What’:
Leisure-purchases by visitors, from both Inbound and Domestic source markets, can be best thought of as a sub-set of the Special Occasion Market.
Special Occasion purchases, celebrating events such birthdays, anniversaries (or two weeks in another town) are less-discretionary than other leisure budget spends, because ‘marking the event’ requires some kind of expenditure, even if it’s only a caterpillar cake and a bottle of Tesco cava.
Fortunately for us in The Business of Pleasure (and the waistlines of the patrons we serve) the social nature of many of these events means that they are ideally celebrated in shared leisure experiences such as a visit to a show, concert or epic, unforgettable attraction.
And when it comes to researching and planning holidays and short breaks, in major destination cities, a live entertainment experience, or visit to that epic, unforgettable attraction, is often pre-imagined and pre-selected (although sadly not necessarily pre-purchased) as the keynote experience of the entire trip. That marquee event to be cherished forever in the memory.*
2) The ‘When’:
Most experiences supplied in The Business of Pleasure are subject to seasonality. UK Domestic tourism into London, for example, has traditionally been focused on the shoulder seasons, spring and autumn (Q1 and Q4) with Inbound tourism concentrated across the (hopefully warmer) summer months (end Q2 & most of Q3).**
For significant audience segments, these summer months will see Londoners (and their near neighbours in Essex and Kent, Middlesex and Herts) slathering on the sun-cream overseas or in the more southerly UK resorts (from Torquay to Torremolinos, Cornwall to Corfu) or retuning, sunburnt-but-skint, having spent too many hard earnt pennies on Paella, Pasties and Pulpo.
Which is why, most years, most London shows, events and attractions desperately need visitors from the key Inbound source markets to plug the seasonal troughs.
3) The ‘Wherefore Art Thou?’
In times of restricted leisure budgets, every audience segment making a significant contribution to the coffers requires forensic observation and ongoing surveillance.
This means becoming fluent in each source market’s research and planning-stage behaviours; their lead-times and influences, their purchasing patterns, key channels and priorities...
Alongside their in-stay purchasing patterns, key channels and priorities.
It isn’t easy.
And a lot of the key data might work better as a museum-exhibit than an insight-engine by the time it is made available.
But, as with most things, the more you do it, the more proficient you get.
Finally, for a more-elevated (and slightly less sector-specific) celebration of the life-affirming role of tourism this World Tourism Day, 2024, we return, once again, to that foundational text of The Business of Pleasure, the Bokononist funeral rites from Kurt Vonnegut’s Cats Cradle:
“God made mud. God got lonesome. So God said to some of the mud, "Sit up!" "See all I've made," said God, "The hills, the sea, the sky, the stars." And I was some of the mud that got to sit up and look around… What memories for mud to have! What interesting other kinds of sitting-up mud I met!...”
DT
27 September 2024
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*A travel agent once complained to me that a customer had booked a six week European tour for herself and her husband in five minutes, but choosing their seats for The Phantom of The Opera, on the last night of trip, took over an hour.
**With cost of living pressures squeezing leisure budgets in most key source Inbound markets, and London accommodation costs rising, we have seen a trend recently for some overseas visitor segments to move their trips into the lower cost (but generally cooler) shoulder seasons of Q1 and Q4.
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