Everyone can have a tourism experience, but how to make sure it’s a great one?

A good tourism experience is more than just a good holiday spent somewhere. In fact, a good experience can happen anywhere–but when it happens in a place miles away from home, tourists will always look back to that specific region with kind eyes, will share it with their friends and family (and even online), and will always want to come back.

That’s the main goal of providing a great tourist experience: making them count the days for their next trip to the same destination.

But what makes an experience a great tourism experience?

First, tourism is an experience-based industry: it’s the business of creating memories. And to create incredible memories, a great experience is needed: something that the visitor will remember, that creates an emotional attachment by making the traveller belong to somewhere other than their home.

A three-part method:

Experiences can be broken down into three main aspects: product, service, and environment. Product is the physical, commercial good being sold: an accommodation, a rental car, or food at a local restaurant. The service involves delivering the product. When it comes to tourism, the expectations are higher. How the consumer will be treated, how he or she will feel while receiving what was purchased? The third aspect is the environment, in this case, your destination.

A great experience involves a great product, a great service, and a great environment. By combining these three things, tourism operators and professionals add value to customers and create the perfect opportunity for an unmissable and memorable time. It’s simple, but we know that if any of these aspects don’t meet the expectations of tourists, the whole experience can fail–and visitors will remember the bad things way more vividly than the good ones.

That’s why we gathered four tips to help you excel in the tourist experience you deliver:

1. Train your locals and staff on all your region has to offer

Have you ever asked a hotel employee for recommendations on what to do in a place and their answer was not good enough? How did that make you feel? If locals aren’t enthusiastic about the place they live in, why should a tourist?

Training your locals and front-line workers to provide a great experience to visitors and answer their questions with enthusiasm and even suggest a few good things only locals know is essential! Not every traveller will go to a visitor information centre or will search things to do online, sometimes they just want the opinion of someone who lives in the region. You need to make sure they get an authentic and inspiring experience every time they ask for recommendations on things to do and see, that’s why we created the Experience Specialist Program, a personalized step-by-step program so that you can deliver this training to your locals and staff!

2. Create experience-based itineraries

Focus on the experience. What does your visitor want? You can create experience-based itineraries on various themes: family fun, food & drinks, art and culture, adventure… It depends on what your region offers. A family fun itinerary could include a visit to a local park with a huge playground during the morning, lunch on a restaurant with an extensive kid’s menu, and maybe a trip to the aquarium in the afternoon, followed by a delicious ice cream cone on a dairy bar. The experiences don’t need to be fancy or complicated: they just need to create a good memory for the type of traveller they intend to reach.

After you find experiences that fit your theme, it’s time to gather them all in a one-day, two-day or even weekly itinerary. But try to be realistic: it’s hard to suggest a one-day itinerary full of experiences that might take the whole day to do. This will only make the visitor get more confused about what to do. And don’t forget to make a mix of paid and free activities in one day. Most travellers have a budget while travelling and they might not want to spend it all in one day!

3. Focus on simple, local and authentic activities

Modern tourists aren’t too interested in attractions catered to visitors, simply because they might not reflect the real life of the region. Travellers want to hang where the locals do, so let your visitors in on a few of the region’s favourite secret spots, those that might not be so popular between tourists.

As a local, you might overlook these attractions thinking tourists will be disappointed, simply because you’re used to it and see it every day–so there’s no spark for you. If you can’t figure out what would be a good, authentic experience to show visitors, ask the opinion of previous visitors, read reviews online. Maybe you know someone that was a visitor once before becoming a resident of your region: ask them what drew them to your place, what they thought was interesting when they visit the place for the first time.

4. Show you care, even when they are back home

The tourist experience doesn’t stop after they catch a flight back home. Take an interest, keep them up to date with what’s going on. If they provide you with their email address, you can send them packages and special returning discounts for the next season, provide them with interesting social media accounts for your region, or kindly ask them for a review online. Encouraging travellers to write reviews is not only good for your region’s online reputation but also good for visitors to remember all the great things they did in your region and help them keep the experience in mind.

“A tourism product is what you buy; a tourism experience is what you remember.” Canadian Tourism Commission

Don’t know where to start? We can help you with the first step to turn your region’s experiences into excellent ones! The Experience Specialist Program is your workshop in a box, a step-by-step program that will guide you through creating and marketing workshops for locals and front-line workers to ensure they are selling your region to its full potential.

Get to know more about the Experience Specialist Program and request your free marketing information package!