The course is designed around six topics:

1. Products, make way for experiences. Products are so yesterday, and customers want to engage with your offering with all their senses.

2. Different seasons, different markets. You will need to adapt your offer to different types of customers to balance changes in demand.

3. There’s something special about your place in the low season. We often take for granted what’s on our doorsteps, so let’s look at your resources with fresh eyes and see how you can turn them into something special.

4. Let’s design innovative experiences. You will need to create experiences that are great, even when it’s cold, wet, and dark early. Co-create experiences with nearby partners and use events to drive demand.

5. Time for marketing and storytelling. New experiences require a lot of marketing effort, but if they are truly innovative and you’ve communicated them well, consumers will share the messages for you.

6. Be clear what benefits you expect. Visualising the results you want to achieve will help you have the determination you need to make changes.

Attendance to the course and future use of the manual and training materials is entirely free, provided that its used is credited to the FCE Interreg Experience project, as recognised by a creative commons license.

FACILITATOR: Dr Xavier Font is Professor of sustainability marketing at the University of Surrey. He specialises in helping small firms to gain competitive advantage from using sustainable tourism as a tool for product development, marketing and communications. Xavier has run marketing courses more than 3,000 accommodation and activity suppliers, tour operators, national parks and government agencies, in the UK and overseas.

Designing and marketing low season tourism experiences