Tourism & Retail: Tips to sell products, not just memories

When we think of tourism, it’s often through experiences. But there’s one untapped area of the industry that can add value to your customer’s experience – products. There’s an opportunity for tourism businesses to create enchanting retail spaces.

Product is a great channel to tell your brand’s story. You can use items to express the unique selling points of the region, as well as through staff and travellers’ senses. It helps to generate a sense of fun and activity into your space and promotes local producers.

It’s just as vital to highlight the story behind the products and reinforcing the element of storytelling.

Identifying the right products

It’s important to find the relevant product offerings and identify where the gaps currently exist.

There needs to be selection of locally-made products to create a sustainable point of difference and encourage people to return and speak positively about your space to family and friends.

Product categories could include adrenaline experiences, eco-tourism from a service and retail perspective, indigenous culture, food and wine, home and fragrance and body and skincare items.

A local supplier showcase

You could host an event, say every fortnight, that showcases a supplier from your region. They’ll provide a product – wine, fashion, pottery, art or jewellery, for example. Encourage them to offer free samples of their product to generate and boost sales.

This is a great avenue for smaller, emerging businesses who don’t have a shop front and want to promote their brand to local, intrastate, interstate and overseas visitors.

Introducing products to your space requires a focus on visitor engagement. Take away the barriers that are key to closing a sale. Make sure the products aren’t too heavy by being wary of shape and size, and customs requirements. Invest in signage and communicating your brand to every person who walks through your doors, through each sense. Your brand’s values should be reinforced at every touch point

Listen to your visitors. Ask them what products they’d like. Have conversations about their experience. Take away the guessing and go straight to the source.

If you’re looking for more tactics and strategies to build a more successful and connected tourism space, adopt an entrepreneurial mindset for long-term growth. We can help you with this.

At Kiikstart, we’re dedicated to helping people have more choice, influence and control about how they live, work and learn. If you’d like to hear more about what we do, contact us today on 0428 593 400 or enquiries@kiikstart.com.