One of the biggest issues tourism and leisure businesses face is seasonal fluctuations. For watersports, activities and adventure centres, your ticketing season is likely to be during the summer, whilst indoor tours and attractions tend to see a rise in ticket sales during the autumn and winter months.
Discover some of the ways you can look to lengthen your ticketing season for 2023 and beyond.
Understand your audience
In order to market your experiences effectively, you first need to understand your audience and have a clear picture of who your customers are and what they are looking for.
You also need to be aware of life events that will limit your visitor count at certain times of the year. For example, activity and adventure centres often see a rise in ticket sales during the school holidays. That’s because their typical audience is families.
Knowing that allows experience providers to look into marketing to an alternative audience during their slower months. Encourage other demographics such as single adults, couples and friends who want to take a break from work to visit you and get the most out of their holiday.
Create specialised events
Creating specialised events for your attraction helps you to generate more awareness and give more of an incentive for customers to return, as they will be experiencing something different to their first visit.
For example, farms can create an annual event for the Halloween season and encourage visitors to ‘Pick Your Own Pumpkin’. You can even run a pumpkin carving competition on site and continue the event into the evening with music and drinks.
Specialised events like this helps to increase ticket sales and helps companies to think of what more they can offer visitors when attending.
Host virtual events
We all know how difficult it was working in the tourism and leisure industry during the pandemic. However, the one thing we did learn from that was how to create alternative types of experiences, including virtual events and tours.
Part of your marketing efforts can include virtual events where a member of staff will give viewers a tour of your experience or an exclusive online lesson. This gives people the opportunity to see what visiting you would be like and the extras they’d get if they did decide to purchase a ticket.
Virtual events for companies like yours is like watching a movie trailer, it only makes you more curious for the full experience.
Sell memberships and gift vouchers
Research shows providers often generate 25% more annual revenue when selling gift vouchers for their experiences. Gift vouchers give customers the flexibility to decide at a later date the activity or date they want to use. Similarly, it allows them to purchase an experience for their loved ones without having to worry they’ve potentially chosen the wrong event or activity.
Membership schemes are also an ideal way to prolong your ticketing season as they allow companies to increase revenue opportunities, gain a more loyal customer base, whilst also providing customers with a more personalised experience. Memberships encourage organisations to think about how to take their business to the next level, ensuring customers feel what they are paying for is worth the investment.
Access to members-only extras and discounts is what encourages people to visit you more often, increasing your brand awareness and company revenue.
A membership scheme is just one example of how the Beyonk Group can help to support and drive your business forward. From setting pricing rules, to digital waivers, to channel manager and access to our distribution network, there’s so much more to discover inside.
VIP events
Another hack to prolonging your ticketing season is to offer events for your VIP customers.
Who has visited you most this year? Choose the top 10 to invite for an exclusive, discounted event. If you’re a brewery, you could offer a premium drinks package to go alongside their ticket, or give them a first taste of an upcoming drink you e been working on.
Similar to our specialised events section above, this shows your customers how much you value them and only serves as some good PR.
Look at re-engagement campaigns
It’s likely your business has acquired contact information over the years that has sat dormant for one reason or another.
Now is the time to look into those disengaged customers, see who has contacted them previously and for what reason it may not have been of any interest to them.
This is your opportunity to re engage them. Send an exclusive customer discount, or simply send them links to some helpful resources.
Work with partners
If you’re a Halloween or Christmas event attraction, who struggle to stay relevant at other times of the year, a way you can overcome this is by working with some local partners who are less seasonal.
For example, if you’re a watersport activity provider based in Cornwall, you can look to partner with Visit Cornwall to promote your experiences.
This is a special feature included in the Beyonk booking system. Partnering with us gives you access to hundreds of UK destination marketing organisations who can help spread the word to an audience that otherwise would not have found you.
If you would like to get started extending your ticketing season or would prefer some personalised advice, book a meeting with our expert team at a time and date that suits you.
