Kick off the Year with Your First Big Sales Day: Valentine’s Day

The year 2019 is off and running, and with Valentine’s Day just around the corner, it’s time to start prepping for one of the most important days of the year when it comes to sales. In just under a month, on February 14, friends, family and lovers the world over will be exchanging heart-shaped gifts of all kinds and—here’s where it gets interesting—giving the gift of shared experiences, often in the form of gift certificates. Reason enough for tour and activity providers to start making serious preparations for the annual day of love. Below, we’ve put together a few tips to help make sure your Valentine’s Day promotions go off without a hitch.

Bestsellers and Trends:

A Brief Look at Valentine’s Day Facts and Figures In the days leading up to and around Valentine’s Day, sales are strongest for Reisen & Kurztripps, Restaurantbesuche, Bootfahrten, Stadttouren & Kulturangebote und Kochkurse, which is no big surprise. What’s of noticable interest, however, is that the number of voucher purchases is growing and, in some cases, actually surpassing the number of direct bookings to a significant degree. On average, three out of every four bestseller purchases are vouchers. And where this trend is most pronounced — cooking classes — the number of voucher purchases is as high as 68 times more than direct bookings on certain days.
Voucher to direct bookings ratio
on February 14, 2018
Trips & Adventures: 0,5 / 1
Restaurants: 2,5 / 1
Boot Trips: 3,6 / 1
Cities & Cultures: 3,1 / 1
Cooking Classes: 7 / 1
Top numbers on Januar 21, 2018:
Cooking Class: 68 / 1
Valentine’s Day purchases start as early as January and grow steadily the closer February 14 gets. And after the big day, sales remain stable for the rest of the month. This makes Valentine’s Day a good way to jump start voucher and gift certificate sales for a wide range of activities. Oddly enough — or maybe it’s entirely logical — voucher sales for ATV and off-road vehicle-based experiences are five times higher on February 14 and 15 than they are the rest of the month. As to who’s on the giving and receiving end of these last-minutes purchases…it’s anybody’s guess.

Use Valentine’s Day to your advantage

Has it been a while since your customer base has heard from you? Valentine’s Day is a great opportunity to reestablish contact and remind regulars and potential new customers about your products and services. It also gives you a chance to finally put to good use that newsletter, flyer or social media post you’ve been sitting on or to pep up your CRM activities with new content.

Make your tour or activity promotion right for the occasion

Spice things up with a little romance — even barbeque classes, scuba diving lessons and escape rooms could use a little love! Let your imagination run wild, and don’t be afraid to get a little cheesy. Alternatively, you can also go against the grain and offer activities for singles or same-sex groups. But if you want to keep things classic, targeting couples is the way to go. And this usually doesn’t require any additional effort on your part to get that added romantic effect — barbecue classes for couples and escape room games for secret lovers come ready-made with plenty of fire and excitement.

Special Valentine’s Day promotions every tour and activity provider should be using

For many people a shared experience is the perfect gift for Valentine’s. Set your tours and activities apart from the competition with special promotions, such as free upgrades for married couples, discounts for student couples and early bird discounts for regulars.

Printed gift certificates with the right design

Valentine’s Day is an occasion for all of us to make a little extra effort — for gift givers and tour and activity providers alike. Show you care with your own gift certificates. Simply create a design, print them out and sell them via the bookingkit Cross-Selling feature. And an extra tip for the frugal among you: printing your gift certificates in DIN long format saves you and your customers money on postage.

But not everyone wants to plan their Valentine’s Day in advance, and even a single day’s wait for delivery is far too long for the more spontaneous among your customers. This is why it’s also a good idea to offer online gift certificates. bookingkit offers a few Valentine’s Day inspired design templates you’ll be sure to recognize. As always, you can designate a standard design for your gift certificate, and your customers can then choose from a range of variations. For more details about customizing gift certificates, check out the entries in our help section.

bookingkit: Everything you need for perfect gift certificates

To help you get started, here are the 5 best reasons to sell gift certificates on Valentine’s Day:
1. Gift certificates and coupons turn one-time buyers into return customers. They give satisfied participants a good reason to book their next tour or activity.
2. Gift certificates are an excellent way to get satisfied customers to recommend your tours and activities to their friends, family and coworkers. This is a simple, yet effective, referral marketing tool — and you can never have enough of those!
3. Targeted discounts help you make better use of your resources. Turn slow days into paydays with coupon and gift certificate promotions.
4. Coupons and gift certificates produce immediate revenue, even if most of them aren’t redeemed for up to six to nine months. This is especially useful when it comes time to make important investments.

Valentine’s Day is just the start: 2019 is packed with sales opportunities

Great opportunities for sales and marketing don’t begin and end with Valentine’s Day. There are plenty of other opportunities throughout the year which provide equally perfect occasions to rally your sales promotions.