FAQ:

Brand Strategy for Attractions, Experiences, and Tourism Brands

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Welcome to my FAQ page, designed to give you some quick answers to top level questions.

Whether you’re looking to refine your brand strategy, elevate your attraction or tourism experience, or figure out if personalised mentoring is for you, this guide will address your most pressing questions.

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General Questions About Brand Strategy for Visitor Attractions, Tourism and Experience Brands

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What is brand strategy for visitor attraction brands?

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A really good brand strategy for attractions, experiences, and tourism brands should provide you with a comprehensive plan that defines how your business positions itself in the market, communicates its value, and connects with its target audience.

It includes:

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• Aligning your vision (where you're going), mission (what you're doing) and values (how you're doing it).

• Identifying your useful (not unique) selling points (USPs).

• Crafting a compelling story and consistent messaging.

• Creating repetition in a way to helps your key messages stand out without getting boring.

• Understanding and leveraging customer personas.

• Designing touchpoints that enhance customer experience.

• Adding a little of the unexpected and capitalising on trends and opportunities.

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For tourism and experience brands, this involves showcasing emotional, cultural, and sensory aspects to create a lasting impression outside the purchase journey, with the ultimate goal being to give people a reason to remain engaged for the long term.

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Why is brand strategy essential for visitor attractions, tourism and experience brands?

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We're in a super crowded space with ever increasing competition. In the tourism and experience industry we have some epic marketers coming up with truly compelling content and stories to grab the attention of new audiences., A strong brand strategy helps you:

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1. Stand out in a saturated market.

2. Build trust and loyalty among travellers and visitors.

3. Attract your ideal audience through targeted marketing.

4. Align your offerings with consumer desires for unique, meaningful experiences.

5. Growing loyalty and advocacy.

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How do I identify the right target audience for my visitor attraction or tourism business?

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Finding the right audience involves:

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• Conducting market research to identify demographics, psychographics, and behaviours.

• Analysing visitor data from your attraction or competitors in a similar space.

• Crafting personas that represent different customer types.

• Using surveys, feedback, and online reviews to understand motivations.

• Modelling and predicting trends and opportunities.

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By tailoring your branding to your audience’s preferences, you can create a stronger emotional connection.  Of course, some of this will be trial and error as sadly it's rare to be able to entirely predict consumer behaviour.

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What type of services and support does a brand strategist typically offer?

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This will vary from sector to sector as well as between different agencies and consultants.

As a rule you would expect something like this - this is also representative of my services on the whole.

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• Brand positioning or proposition: Defining your brand’s core message and identity.

• Consumer Insights: Understanding consumer behaviour and preferences.

• Aligning brand messaging with trends and opportunities

• Storytelling: Developing narratives that resonate with visitors to elevate your brand’s emotional appeal, memorability and shareability.

• Customer Journey Mapping: Understand and enhancing every touchpoint from discovery to post-visit engagement to strengthen loyalty and advocacy.

• Content Marketing: Creating a top-line marketing strategy and channel plan, with support for relevant team members to show how the brand strategy should be implemented and maintained. 

• Visual Branding: Some brand strategists may also offer design services or contract this out to create or update a cohesive look and feel for logos, websites, and promotional materials.

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Do brand strategists offer 1-1 mentoring and support?

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Yes I offer 1-1 support. My mentoring sessions are tailored to individuals or small teams looking to sharpen their skills in consumer brand strategy. These sessions can cover:

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• Brand development fundamentals.

• How to pivot or evolve your existing strategy.

• Building emotional connections with customers.

• Practical exercises and frameworks for real-world application.

• Defining specific strategic goals eg partnerships, messaging, channel strategy or new sectors.

• Continuity, cohesion and consistency.

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What are the best ways to promote or market a visitor attraction or experience?

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1. Leverage visual storytelling through high-quality short form video and imagery in your own brand style and personality.

2. Optimise for local SEO (and AI optimisation) and use targeted keywords, longtail search terms and geographical/near me searches - be sure to get expert search advice here in order to rank and compete.

3. Collaborate with travel/day out influencers and niche content creators - be sure to do the groundwork here to find partners that will amplify your message to the right audiences.

4. Create compelling itineraries or packages that simplify planning for visitors and show that you understand all of their considerations - this includes making sure your customer care is on point.

5. Use social proof like testimonials and user-generated content to build trust across your channels.

6. Consider partnerships with other local services that appeal to your target audience.

7. Use paid budget wisely and employ expert help if needed to ensure your messaging is clear and your targetting is detailed.

8. Ensure the customer journey from search to results is quick and easy, making sure that you test and learn regularly based on the experience a customer will have on and offline.

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How do I make sure that my attraction or experience appeals from a sustainability perspective?

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Sustainability is a growing priority. To attract eco-conscious guests you need to go beyond the superficial statements that consumers are bombarded with every day:

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• Highlight green initiatives, like reducing waste or using renewable energy in a way that is fun and engaging, making sure to highlight how your visitors contribute to this.

• Partner with local communities to promote responsible tourism - make sure this is authentic by having clear goals to your plans and showcase the results and how these have created real local benefit.

• Communicate your values transparently through your website, social media, and on-site materials.

• Be honest where you are working hard but have a way to go - take people on that journey, showing your progress.

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What  tools and frameworks are used in brand strategy and proposition that I can use myself?

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All of the tools that I use with clients are based on brand strategy fundamentals and putting the consumer at the heart of a brand.​

I've created these tools over my 20 year career and you'll find similarities as they are rooted in decades of user analysis and learning around marketing principals and consumer behaviour.

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• Brand roadmap - to join up and align the core parts of a proposition from the what and why to who and how.

• The messy middle - understanding the bit between what you do and what your customer actually wants. This is the really juicy bit where we squeeze out all the noise and fluff that's stopping you communicating effectively with your audience.

• Situational relevance - understanding what is really important to people in their current situation so you can connect with them - for example, families with teens in the winter or solo adults with a big disposable income.

• Trigger thinking - creating a point of difference between a struggle and a trigger - for example, we really should book a family day out this half term, vs it's Tommy's birthday and he wants to do a virtual reality experience.

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Working with me, a pretty decent brand strategist for attraction and experience businesses.

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What makes your brand strategy consultant different/better/smarter/more indispensable?

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Because I focus exclusively on attractions, experiences, and tourism brands, you get someone with up to the minute knowledge of what's happening in the sector and how you can leverage that.. This niche expertise allows me to deliver tailored solutions that account for the specific challenges and opportunities that define how your customer buys.

With a mix of strategic insight and creative thinking, I help brands connect with their audience on an emotional level while delivering measurable results.

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Trends and opportunities in days out, experiences and tourism

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What are the top trends shaping tourism brand strategy in 2025?

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1. Personalised Experiences: Brands tailoring offerings based on individual preferences and predicting consumer behaviour

2. AI Integration: Using AI tools for targeted marketing and enhanced visitor interactions.

3. Immersive Technologies: Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) experiences.

4. Cultural Sustainability: Promoting and preserving local community, wealth and heritage.

5. Micro moments: small moments of joy or surprise and delight.

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You can find more trends on The Plot blog.

 

How can smaller tourism brands and days out compete with bigger operators?

 

Smaller brands can succeed by:

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• Focusing on niche markets or underserved audiences. Don't lose sight of what makes you different and special.

• Offering highly personalised and intimate experiences. It is possible to deliver incredible surprise and delight on a budget - in turn driving social media sharing.

• Building strong community ties and authentic partnerships.

• Using social media and local SEO to maximize visibility on a smaller budget.

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Worries you might have about your brand strategy.

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Will having brand personality make us seem unprofessional?

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Being authentic and consistently true to your brand personality and tone of voice are the most important things you can do to drive brand growth, awareness and loyalty.  Of course, you don't want to be 'out there' for the sake of it - refining your brand personality is about showing your values and engaging your people.

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What if the brand proposition approach alienates some of our customers?

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There are far more people who will never be your customer, than will - and that's good. Trying to create broad appeal is trying to create no appeal.  Focus on the major motivators of your primary audience. This will attract secondary and further audiences beyond. Unless you are entirely changing your strategy to pivot from one audience to another, don't panic about alienating customers.

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This is big and our team aren't totally comfortable with changing the brand strategy.

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Your team should be a big part of the evolution of the brand as the values inherent to the business and product should be inherent to them too,  Making them part of the decision making is key, as well as providing examples of what can work and how, templates, guidance and toolkits to make adoption easy is all part of the process.  Any major objections should be discussed to ensure that all important considerations are being talked over.

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Our brand is quite serious and formal - can we still have brand personality?

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The most important thing is that your tone fits your audience.  You can absolutely have personality without being silly or unprofessional,  The key is to create a dialogue with people that feels accessible and relatable. 

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Who is Catherine Warrilow?

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Catherine Warrilow is a brand strategist for visitor attractions.

So hi!

I've worked in travel and tourism since 2008 - initially with hotels and holiday rentals including Owners Direct and HomeAway, now VRBO, as well as Hard Rock Hotels.

I've been lucky to work across all corners of the industry from attractions to OTAs, destinations to DMOs as well as travel tech partners and suppliers.

That industry knowledge coupled with a lifetime in brand, marketing, PR and content means I  have the ability to see where the challenges and opportunities are in your brand strategy.

I help clients across the UK as well as Europe, the US and Canada with their brand proposition, as well as running workshops and webinars and speaking at industry events like Arival, BETA and the National Attraction Marketing Conference.

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The nitty gritty

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How much does it cost to work with you?

 

One off consultancy sessions cost £130 for one hour and can be booked here.

Bundle deals are available too.

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Speaker appointments start from £795.

Projects start from £1200.

Retainers start from £1600.

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Are costs broken down for each stage of the process?

 

Yes they can be and that typically splits over the initial brand proposition review, figuring out what's going on in your messy middle, and the resulting strategy or recommendations.

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How long does each step of a brand proposition review take?

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Typically the full process would take place over 9-12 weeks, allowing for regular reviews, wider business input and decisions.

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Do you work outside of visitor attractions, travel and tourism?

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I choose to only work with clients where I have expansive knowledge of their sector and audience which is tourism - visitor attractions and experiences, destinations, DMOs and travel tech partners.
I also have a handful of clients who sit within the broader leisure and entertainment industry.

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How do you measure the results of improving your brand strategy?

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This will be specific to you, but over time we would look at metrics like organic website traffic, increases in search volume, growth in social media engagement, PR and media coverage, partnership enquiries, customer satisfaction scores, retention and loyalty, and ultimately sales.

Note, though that brand is the foundation for performance marketing which is directly measurable. Investing in your brand strategy is investing in the building blocks you need to grow from.

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Got more questions?  Get in touch by filling in the form below with your question or simply ping me on LinkedIn.