Are you overlooking a niche market opportunity in your community?
Niche market opportunities respond to, or create, the invitation for consumers to connect with your product, program or service. The narrower you can define your offer, the better you understand the customer, the greater is your potential to succeed in a tightly defined sub-set of a mass market.
I like to think of it as a filter. Start with tourism for example – people travelling for a range of reasons be it leisure, business, or sporting events. That brings us to sports tourism – people who travel with a primary motive to participate or watch a sporting event. Narrow this down a bit more and you find running tourism – people choosing destinations based on a primary or secondary motivator to enjoy running experiences. Then examine the running market who is travelling and voila you find - marathon tourism - globetrotters who travel the world to enjoy marathons as a participant or supporter. In fact a friend of mine ran her first marathon in Iceland, not her home country of Canada. She combined her desire for an incredible fitness achievement with an incredible vacation destination.
Some people will be avid marathoners who select destinations for competitive purposes and to round out their ‘trophy destinations’ such as the Boston Marathon. Others love running marathons and use this as a reason to visit a new destination. What ever the motivation for the individual, there is a business opportunity for communities to consider.
Today in the Victoria Times Colonist a wonderful article describes how the 30-year-old Royal Victoria Marathon has grown from a single race event with 750 people, to one that on October 11th, 2009 will attract 11,000 participants into one of four events (full marathon, half marathon, 8 km, and a children’s 1.2 km). What an experience as a runner and a traveller to Victoria. This could be your community! Your event!
Think about the business opportunity. This event now attracts 80% of its competitors from out of town. The local economic impact forecast is up to $6 million. Now that’s success!
So what does this mean to your tourism business? your community?
1. Think about what types of major event or community festival complements your town, your assets. Victoria is renown for its number of per capita runners, training world-class triathletes like Simon Whitfield.
2. Think about what your company, your community, and potentially hundreds of volunteers would be proud to be associated with, activities your local politicians would support, and affiliate organizations with whom you could partner.
3. Think long-term and big picture. I doubt the 1979 organizers would have imagined the impact of this niche market idea 30 years ago.
4. Think about what is needed as a catalyst for the organization, traditional and non-traditional partners, committees, governance structures, funding sources and even things like weather and time of year. Major events can be used to create new revenues, extend the season, rather than compete with existing activities and tourism draws.
5. Think carefully about the risks and limitations, optimal size (upper and lower limits), have an exit strategy.
6. Plan the size, shape and financial peramaters for your event in today’s economy, but ensure keep your eye on the future and ‘what if’ your event becomes as successful as the Royal Victoria Marathon?
7. Be strategic. Major events, even highly niched ones can bring a tremendous amount of opportunity and profile to a community, they also are a great deal of work and require passionate commitment by a large number of people.
If you do champion a major event in your community, remember the most important element – carefully define your ‘ideal guests’ and then focus, focus, focus.
