Author: Marley Kirkpatrick

The Heads and Tails of Shoulder Season Tourism in Destination Marketing

Why should destination marketers prioritize shoulder season tourism? What are the opportunities and challenges? Who’s interested in shoulder season travel?

Before answering these burning questions, let’s start with the basics of seasonality in tourism. If peak season is when tourism is at its highest and lowest in the off season, the shoulder season is the period in between.

But when is it, exactly?

According to the Tourism Industry Association of Canada (TIAC), our country has two shoulder seasons: from September to November and from April to May. That’s not to say it’s the same from one destination to the next. For example, in Whistler, British Columbia, the shoulder season begins in April but stretches well into June, while Iqaluit, Nunavut, experiences its shoulder season from May to June.

How to identify your destination’s seasonality

Seasonality is directly related to revenue and hotel occupancy, per TIAC’s Developing Winter and Shoulder Season Tourism Toolkit.

To determine your destination’s seasonality, inspect the numbers and look for trends each month and season. When revenue and occupancy are highest, that’s your peak season; when they’re lowest, that’s your off season; and when they’re moderate, that’s your shoulder season.

That’s the basics of seasonality in tourism. Dig a little deeper and we see three defining characteristics:

Consistency: High, low, and shoulder seasons occur at the same time each year—the timing is predictable and reliable.

Commonality: Seasonality isn’t specific to tourism—its impact is widespread, from agriculture to culinary, real estate to investing.

Cause: Seasonality is determined by internal and external factors—weather patterns, influx of temporary residents in your destination, and seasonal activities.

TIAC’s Elevating Canadian Experiences program helped elevate culinary-related and winter and shoulder season tourism in 2020. Here’s how we helped that knowledge live on.

Why focus on shoulder season tourism?

Unlike the off season, the shoulder season is ripe with opportunity for destinations, operators, and travellers alike.

For destinations and operators, demand is lower than the peak season. As a result, travel and accommodation fare decrease, and this can incentivize visitations. Lower demand also increases flexibility in offers, from pricing to business hours to more intimate experiences.

For travellers, a destination is less crowded in its shoulder season. In the wake of the 2020 pandemic, research shows tourists are seeking out less busy places to visit. Doing so allows them to experience the place in a more authentic way.

Travellers not only save more during the shoulder season, they experience destinations in a more intimate and bespoke way.

Yes, the shoulder season does have its limitations. Some activities aren’t available and some attractions close. Like boat cruises shutting down in the winter, or heritage sites closing for maintenance in the fall. This can mean less to see and do for visitors.

Another obstacle is staffing. If your destination’s operators rely on post-secondary students to fill positions, many of those employees return to their hometowns following the school year. So some businesses are forced to reduce hours or close for the season entirely. This has a direct impact on visitor experience.

Five ways to grow shoulder season tourism

Let’s explore how to maximize the shoulder season in your destination.

1. Target new audience segments

The type of travellers visiting during the peak season don’t have to be the same as those you market to in the shoulder season.

In fact, peak-season guests may not be interested in shoulder season experiences at all. Meaning, winter enthusiasts may not be sun-seeking beach goers. Just like foodies may not be adventure-seeking adrenaline junkies.

If activities and attractions differ from season to season, the audiences you target should follow suit. This is niching 101. For instance, if your destination’s shoulder season is September to October, and fall foliage is a unique offering, consider narrowing your audience to photographers and hiking enthusiasts.

2. Adapt messaging to reflect seasonality

Similar to targeting different audience segments, how you communicate the value of the shoulder season should differ from your peak season.

This might mean a shift from overarching brand messaging to niche offerings and how they benefit a specific audience. Or focusing on how your destination is less crowded and how that positively impacts the visitor experience.

It could also mean highlighting lower prices of accommodations and travel, communicating how guests’ budgets go further during the shoulder season. Specifically, it’s cheaper to visit during the shoulder season, so visitors can see more, do more, and taste more during their stay—just be careful you don’t devalue your core offerings in the process.

3. Narrow down geographical targeting

This one may seem counterproductive, as it limits the reach of your marketing and advertising efforts. But with the pandemic’s after effects lingering and concerns over climate change growing, more and more travellers are considering destinations closer to home.

People are more aware of the impact tourism has on a destination, both economically and environmentally. As a result, they are keen to support local and regional businesses, while seeking out places they can get to easily without producing a large carbon footprint. This means visiting destinations they can drive to or are accessible by train.

As it relates to media, consider digital and social media advertising with strict geographical parameters. Or niche publications in nearby cities—like our client, Tourism Kingston, and its focus on culinary magazines specific to Ottawa and Toronto.

Want to learn more about our work with Tourism Kingston, including media and brand strategies? Check out the case study.

4. Develop new products and experiences

Sometimes, the best way to improve shoulder season tourism is to create new offerings specific to the time of year.

For example, if the fall is your main shoulder season and you’ve identified birders as a viable target audience, why not develop a series of guided hikes through migratory areas? Or if you want to attract history buffs, try working with a local heritage group to push fall maintenance into the winter to create a win-win-win scenario.

Ultimately, developing new products and experiences is a big investment. And it can be risky when the effectiveness is largely unknown. Be sure to connect with your local destination marketing organization (DMO), operators, and even city officials for support and resources.

5. Create new partnerships

Funding is an ongoing concern for tourism brands, destination marketers, and operators. Even more so when trying to enhance a season with lower profits.

This is why partnerships are so important. They bring stakeholders together and pool resources. They lower the barrier to entry for new operators and lessen the load for all involved. What’s more, they open the door to new products and packaged offerings.

Start with your DMO, as it exists to connect stakeholders with each other. More so, it’s a resource hub. Where funding opportunities, research and insights, workshops and events, and marketing support are all housed under one roof.

How impactful can funding opportunities be? Learn how Alphabet® and Ottawa Tourism teamed up to help local businesses thrive post-pandemic.

Next, reach out to city representatives—support is always a possibility, as long as you’re willing to lobby for it. Remember, a boost in tourism, from peak season to shoulder season, benefits them as much as it does the place.

Finally, don’t underestimate the power of a ‘boots on the ground’ approach. Speak directly with the businesses and entrepreneurs in your destination. Organize monthly meetups to brainstorm new ideas, share success stories, and even discuss failures.

At the end of the day, more visitors means more heads in beds, diners in restaurants, and more travellers on the trails.

More opportunities to consider

How else can you improve shoulder season tourism?

Start with email marketing. Take advantage of the peak season to build a list of travellers who have visited your destination and experienced its core offerings. Then test your ideas before investing in new products and packages.

Send surveys by email and ask for feedback from past guests—what they enjoyed most during their visit, what they didn’t enjoy, and what they would like to see more of. To generate more responses, consider an incentive and tie it to the shoulder season.

Another option might be a loyalty program. Not only can this increase tourism throughout the year, but it also has the potential to stimulate repeat visits and word-of-mouth marketing.

Entice past guests to visit during the shoulder season by rewarding them for visiting during the peak season. Consider how to involve operators and partners:

If hotels are struggling to put heads in beds, preferred-member pricing is an option.
If restaurants are struggling to fill tables, give a gift card to returning guests.
If museums are quiet, a private tour could be a powerful motivator.

Lastly, pay attention to the calendar. Identify annual events during the shoulder season, both holidays and those hosted by operators. Make note of when school breaks take place. And pinpoint seasonal activities relevant to the audiences you’re targeting. Then launch marketing campaigns specific to these events, breaks, and activities, positioning your destination as the backdrop.

A helping hand to boost shoulder season tourism

A sustainable destination is built on more than its peak season. With growing concerns for over tourism, the shoulder season is a way to alleviate the pressure. And as remote work and blended travel (business combined with leisure) become more popular, people are seeking alternative times to travel.

With more than 20 years’ experience in place branding, marketing, and strategy, we’re here to lend a helping hand. Connect with the Alphabet® team when you’re ready to take on the shoulder season and maximize the potential of your destination.

industry

Embracing Authenticity: Where Tourism is Headed in 2024

Travel in 2024 continues to be motivated by experiencing the local flavour of a place, something you can’t capture anywhere else. The mom-and-pop restaurant with locally sourced produce. The mural downtown you simply must have your picture taken with. The bridge over a river where everyone goes to watch the sunset. It’s the little things, the unique things, that people are seeking when they travel.

Based on various industry reports, plus insights from the 2023 Tourism Industry Association of Canada (TIAC) Congress, we’ve collated some tourism trends we’re anticipating for the year ahead.

Embracing local, sustainable choices aligned with personal values

A 2022 report from the World Travel & Tourism Council, in partnership with Trip.com Group and Deloitte, shared how more people are planning their itineraries to include activities that stimulate the local economy. Choosing to purchase locally sourced products and experiences is a priority.

Sustainability ladders up into a larger conversation—travelling in alignment with personal values. As we’re confronted with the realities of climate change and how our actions affect the planet, travellers are looking to experience a destination without leaving too large of an environmental footprint—and ideally have a positive contribution to the place by supporting eco-friendly attractions, staying in neighbourhoods, choosing locally owned businesses, visiting walkable destinations, and even to some, looking to engage with local volunteer groups and activities. These are all ways people are aligning travel with their personal values.

So what does this mean for destinations? Knowing travellers are looking for more sustainable experiences, these should be a primary ongoing feature in your content marketing. Remember, it’s about authenticity. Today’s traveller is looking for relevant, engaging information about a place and the things to experience once they get there. Give them lots of unique ideas while highlighting your local businesses as much as possible.

Prioritizing travel as a necessary expense

It’s no secret that spending habits are shifting as people adjust to the rising cost of living. But that doesn’t mean people are eliminating travel. In fact, it doesn’t appear travel is taking a back seat when it comes to spending decisions. Greg Klassen from Skift Advisory noted at the TIAC Congress that consumers are willing to give up other purchase decisions and spending in order to accommodate travel. Travel is being seen as a need, not a want. A need for mental health and wellbeing, personal growth, education, and rejuvenation. It’s shifted from a luxury to a necessity. Destinations should consider what is motivating their visitors, provide as much value as possible, and find ways to support and encourage the personal benefits of travelling.

Another consideration of “therapeutic travel” is the influx of solo travel, as people are looking for smaller, intimate experiences. According to Press Reader, solo travellers are more likely to visit local spots (think hobbies and classes, smaller attractions, unique activities) than a typical tourist experience.

As a destination, consider how you can optimize a potential solo visitor’s stay. Are there promotions to run, partnerships to be had, unique value only your place can offer?

Connecting with local cultures

Every community has its own unique culture to be tapped into, creating unique travel experiences for visitors and locals alike. Effective destination marketing promotes local vendors, entertainment, nightlife, shopping, and embraces the variety of global cultures of a place.

According to Skift, hotels are creatively addressing a guest’s desire to immerse in local culture such as music, food, and art. Hotel experiences are now localized, incorporating the unique and the bespoke—and much more than just a place to sleep. They’re a way to experience local culture for the modern traveller.

Authenticity remains key. Promoting local without consulting local is missing the point. Talk to local businesses, community groups and associations, and residents to learn, listen, and understand what’s unique and how best to partner and promote to potential visitors. Use these insights to build a destination experience that accurately reflects your community, uncovering your niche as authentically as possible.

Leveraging social media in 2024

Social media continues to play an important role in how we find new travel destinations. Inspiration for travel can be found through a stream of short format video content, influencer content, or photography of a place. A 2023 MGH survey revealed that 60% of American TikTok users have become interested in visiting a new destination after seeing a video about it. The same survey showed 32% of users have booked a stay at a new resort or hotel they saw on TikTok, and 28% have visited an attraction they saw on TikTok.

And that’s just one social media platform. A 2022 report from the digital consumer research firm Bulbshare found 99% of Gen Z consumers (those born between 1997 and 2022) will skip an ad if it’s an option, and 81% of consumers trust “real opinions over those promoted by an advertisement,” says Bulbshare CEO Matt Hay.

So what does this mean for destination marketers? Content. You need to be continuously creating content about your place—a constant stream of imagery and video. A well-articulated place brand platform will help to guide the content plan—identifying key pillars of content, a contributor strategy, an influencer strategy, and opportunities for paid and earned media support. It’s an “always on” approach to creating awareness and an impression of place.

With a new year comes new trends and opportunities for place marketers. Reach out to us today for our expert insight to help you achieve your 2024 goals.

industry - social media

Curating a Selfie-Made Tourism Destination

Millennials and Gen Z tourists are unlike their predecessors. Their desire to experience different cultures, food, and adventures remains the same, but how they choose a destination has changed dramatically.

According to WeSwap, and its research on the booking behaviour of travellers aged 18–34, a destination’s Instagram-ability is highly influential when planning a vacation. In other words, how photogenic a location is has become a major consideration. Of those surveyed:

61% say sharing beautiful holiday experiences online is important to them
31% admit posting holiday pictures online is as important as the trip itself
29% won’t choose a destination if they can’t post on social media while there

Destination Marketing Organizations (DMO) and tourism operators have come to accept this as the norm. Popular destinations prioritize their social media presence, carefully curating their channels to reflect the best of what they have to offer. The goal is to capture attention with a visually pleasing feed by being intentional about what they share and how they share it. Not only does this highlight their experiences and attractions, but it also tells potential visitors, “This is how good your trip will look online.”

Younger tourists are motivated by the allure of the selfie, and catering to their travelling behaviour is ripe with rewards. But it comes with some risks, too. Let’s explore how to curate a selfie-made tourism destination while mitigating potential disadvantages.

Tim Forbes/Forbes Photographer. http://www.forbesphotographer.com

Promote share-worthy attractions

Your social media is often the initial touchpoint for younger travellers. This is your chance to make a good first impression. But the modern tourist doesn’t just want to see and experience what you have to offer – they also want to share it with their followers online. In fact, 97% of surveyed millennials admit to posting travel photos to social media during their trips, while 85% will continue to post about their holiday experiences upon returning home.

When marketing attractions or promoting partners within your destination, consider what’s important to visitors from this perspective. Ask yourself:

Are people able to interact with elements of the experience?
Will guests be able to connect to the internet?
Can I create a picture-perfect background?
How can I make an attraction unique?
Is photography prohibited?

A good example is the “I in Kingston” sign located in downtown Kingston. Alphabet® worked with Visit Kingston, the city’s tourism organization, to design and build an urban public structure guests can interact with by standing in for the letter “i” in the sign.

It offers a great photo opportunity, and it’s an experience people love to share online. So much so, the fixture went viral during its first summer – the #IinKingston hashtag has generated hundreds of thousands of impressions on Instagram with close to 1,200 posted photos.

Do hashtags still help increase your organic reach on social media? Of course – when they’re used correctly. Learn the art of the hashtag.

The sign is also in a great location – close to the waterfront, in the heart of downtown, next to the Visitor’s Information Centre, and the starting point of many city tours. It was originally installed as a temporary structure to celebrate Canada’s 150th anniversary, but due to the sign’s popularity, the city invested in making it permanent.

Call out photo-friendly places

The opportunity to explore the outdoors is important to a lot of travellers – especially in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. But limited cell reception in the backcountry presents a challenge to those wanting to share their experiences in real time. Remember, Millennials will choose a travel destination or attraction based on whether or not they can access the internet. Further to that, 43% of those polled by WeSwap said they won’t go on holiday if they can’t share photos and check in with their followers.

So how can you communicate the benefit of your destination’s wilderness experiences without dissuading some travellers?

Luckily, many national and provincial parks across Canada have started to add internet hotspots to their campgrounds and trails. The priority is guest safety, but it also presents an opportunity to market these locations as being social media friendly.

On the other hand, some places, like museums and art centres, don’t allow guests to take pictures. This is beyond your control, but history and culture buffs are still an important audience to attract to your destinations. Consider segmenting your marketing to target younger travellers specifically and highlighting architecture, street art, and other photo-friendly attractions on your social feed, instead.

Adapt destination marketing to destination management

Fueling wanderlust and positioning your destinations as share-worthy on social media has obvious benefits. But not everyone is thrilled about having their cities and towns packed with tourists.

Destination management is a holistic approach to tourism, where you coordinate most elements of a destination, like environmental concerns and local resources, events and activities, accommodations and transportation, as well as attractions and marketing.

Some residents, property owners, and even businesses are pushing back against promoting their hometowns as a popular tourism destination. Overcrowding puts a major strain on the environment and can lead to significant social impacts, from air pollution, litter, and waste to an increase in water consumption and a skyrocketing population.
One of the most common examples is Daffodil Hill in California. This picturesque destination exploded in popularity after photos of the flower-filled field began trending on social media. As a rural location, it was unable to sustain the flood of tourists – limited parking, poor road infrastructure, lack of restrooms, and damage to the flowers quickly became a problem. The property owners were forced to close off the area shortly thereafter.

Another example is the Matapouri Mermaid Pools in New Zealand. The site is considered a sacred place to the Maori Indigenous people and once attracted thousands of visitors each year. But waste was often left behind by tourists, leading to the indefinite closure of the pools in 2019.

With social media and mobile technology being a staple in modern tourism, more and more of these incidents are occurring across the globe. Creating a selfie-made tourism destination will attract the next generation of travellers. But it’s more important than ever to do it in a sustainable way. As DMOs and tourism operators, destination management must be baked into your overall strategy. Consider the following questions:

How will you handle the influx of tourists?
How will you balance the expectations of guests with the quality of life of residents?
How can you minimize the environmental impact while maximizing the visitor experience?

The goal is to add value to your tourism destination without sacrificing partnerships, the community, or the environment. To achieve this goal, your strategy must be as intentional as curating your Instagram feed. For more insight, our client – the Tourism Industry Association of Canada – is a great resource.

Alphabet® has decades of experience developing brands and campaigns for Canada’s tourism sector. Check out more of our tourism work, and don’t hesitate to contact us to see how we can help move your destination forward.