Developing your tourism offer
This section of the toolkit is about how to create a great arts, culture or heritage experience that is worth travelling to and paying for.
things that can make your experience world-class are:
- The uniqueness of what you offer
- Harnessing the power of your story by telling it creatively
- Aligning with our Northern Ireland - Embrace a Giant Spirit
brand
What else can you do that no one else can?
Exercise 3A
Your experience needs to stand out. In areas of low tourism footfall, it may have to attract people to travel to the area. In places where there are more activities on offer, it must rise above the competition.
In either case, a successful visitor experience must be special, unusual and if possible unique. You need to capitalise on what you do exceptionally well and others cannot easily replicate.
These will usually relate to your people, your place, your collections and their stories.
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How to harness the power of your story
Exercise 3B
Visitors have always enjoyed exchanging stories. Well-told tales are a great way to connect with a place quickly.
For travellers from afar, who are a transient and time-limited audience, stories are an important way to connect with the heritage of a place or its people. The arts offer an exciting array of media for conveying meaning and contemporary resonance and breathing fresh life into old stories and bold facts.
Use storytelling skills to bring heritage to life suggests how to build the ingredients of great stories and storytelling into your offer.
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Developing your story
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Ideas to inpsire
When defining the big idea, you need to consider the whole offer from a visitor’s perspective. Make sure some of the following themes and services are included within your idea.
They may appear in your idea through working with others, or they may be more core to your own idea. You might link these into your idea to develop more authenticity and personalisation.
Use these suggestions as a checklist: