Page 4 - RadonicRodgers AdVantage #3

POSITION PAPER
NICHE POSITIONING: Specializing your
they had already made this change and 71% of respondents said they had significantly changed the range of products they offered.*
Travel purchasers are also stat- ing that price is a declining factor in
Travel purchasing decisions. It is still the number one factor, but increasing in importance are other factors that indicate more varied and fractured groupings of buyers, each with their own criteria for Travel experiences and special offerings.
Yet these groups of purposeful purchasers are not easily swayed
by quick niche changes and product refreshes. They are looking for ex- pertise-driven products with tons
of niche-specific and value-added information from their Travel vendors.
This provides credibility and safety in the readily evident fact that their chosen vendor truly is an expert in their particular niche.
Attracting ready-to- purchase buyers
This is where the power of positioning and re-thinking about who you are as a Travel firm can make the difference in moving from mediocre business survival with unsustainable competi- tive pricing, to a dominant market player with pricing power — enabling a firmer financial business model.
Does this mean you should sud- denly start offering new and exciting exotic Travel packages for obscure destination experiences? Perhaps. It may be worth exploring and inves- tigating, especially if you are able to craft a unique twist on it. I suspect, however, you already have a unique
Travel offering that simply needs to be groomed from your existing products. You may already have a compelling niche offering with the supporting expertise in that specialty, and you just need to refine it, specializing even more on a product that you already do very well with. In so doing, you
will be able to develop more profit- able and less price-sensitive products.
In working with our clients’ stra- tegic and branding projects, the first thing we do in our diagnostic discovery is distill what exactly the client’s niche positioning is. Casino Vacations (formerly a two division company: Casino Coach and FrontLine Tours), initially came to our firm for a refresh of their Website. We engaged in a diagnosis of their brand situation, and what we discovered was that there was some brand confusion and dilu- tion with the two different divisions, while at the same time we identified the common element in their exper- tise as the pearl of their business – the casino-oriented vacation products.
Travel & Tourism offering By Ross Rodgers – Published in OMCA’s Road Explorer Magazine
HAVE YOU EVER WONDERED why so many companies in the Travel and Tourism industry position them- selves pretty much the same way? Are they really all so similar?
I suspect not.
Yet so many Travel firms stumble
on this, and allow themselves to be commoditized and marginal- ized to the point where they must compete on price with every other
Travel provider.
They do this by offering way too
much product and in way too many categories of Travel while constantly and frantically scrambling to ensure product pricing is up-to-the-minute and priced to sell. They are effectively spread too thin and afraid to settle on one strong specialty – afraid that they might lose out on business that the
“do-everything- for-everyone” model supposedly brings in.
Is that you? How’s that working out for you? Does that put you in control of your product price points, or are your competitors determining your pricing?
You probably have more stress than necessary and may have changed the price of your product five times already in the last month or two.
The good news is that you are not doomed to be at the mercy of your competitor’s pricing. In many cases, the reality is that Travel and
Tourism organizations already have something special to offer. By not capitalizing on their unique strengths, they are missing out on the dra- matic business opportunity that
specialization offers toward efficiency and profitability.
Focusing on specialty
A growing segment of Canadian Travel buyers are truly looking for
something special in their Travel purchase. This group of Tourism buyers is expanding quickly while becoming increasingly affluent and sophisticated purchasers of Travel product. This is due to the ease of access to Travel information on the Web and conversations on social media channels.
In response, many Travel agencies are responding to this trend in a big way. 31% of Travel agencies indicated they had plans to narrow their selling focus to concentrate on more profit- able niche markets, while 19% said
4 RadonicRodgers Strategy+ Travel & Tourism Marketing — AdVantage Volume 3