The Isle of Wight attracts around two million visitors every year, but recent figures suggest that there has been a slight decline in numbers. With so many other attractive island options accessible to holidaymakers in the UK and France, the Isle of Wight arguably needs to do more to keep encouraging people to visit.
One innovative solution to this could be for businesses on the island to band together and create a shared island prize fund. Visitors could get tickets to a draw by visiting different local establishments, and it would pay out to a lucky winner once it reached a certain amount. This could be an excellent way to boost tourism and engage visitors more.
A Collective Promotion Across the Island
There are various deals and promotions available across the businesses on the Isle of Wight, with some sites dedicated to highlighting where people can find them all. There are plenty of excellent ways to save money, with everything from cheap ferry journeys to free nights in hotels available.
To get greater attention, however, it would be interesting to see Isle of Wight businesses do something that’s rarely been done before. Imagine if many of them pooled together and started a prize fund, set to pay out to one lucky winner once it gets big enough. Businesses could take a percentage from customer purchases, and put these in a networked prize fund.
Customers would simply put in their email to participate in the competition. Then, once the fund reaches an agreed amount, it pays out to one email selected at random. In addition to paying out to the winner, the emails could be used for future promotional marketing campaigns.
Encouraging Repeat Visits Through a Growing Reward
The system would be like a lottery, with everyone paying a small amount to have a chance to win something much bigger. This has worked well in the online casino industry, where progressive slot machines like Age of the Gods give lucky people the chance to win enormous sums. These are some of the most popular games now, as players can see the jackpots rising and know that they have just as good a chance as anyone to win them.
If local businesses around the Isle of Wight promoted a networked prize pool that people could easily see rising, it may encourage tourists to spend more at the different cafes, restaurants, and hotels. By doing so, they’d give themselves a greater chance of being able to take home the jackpot. If they also received notifications about it through their email accounts, it could also encourage repeat visits to the island to try to improve their odds of winning.
This would be a highly modern approach to tourism marketing, and one that would be possible thanks to upgrades in technology. The various businesses could easily be linked using blockchain. People could be kept in the loop easily through email marketing and social media. It’s certainly something that’s worth considering if the Isle of Wight is to boost its visitor numbers.
