7 Marketing Lessons from Niagara Falls

Earlier this summer, my family went to Niagara Falls for our summer vacation. Both the Horseshoe Falls on the Canadian side and the American Falls are magnificent!

The falls are free. But being a tourist attraction, they are surrounded by many opportunities to part you with your cash.

Here are marketing lessons from our trip to Niagara Falls, Ontario

1. Offer Packages

We could have driven there and back on the same day but we decided to stay for a couple nights to do all we wanted to do so we looked for hotel packages. We chose a hotel right beside Clifton Hill (in the thick of the tourist district) partly because of its location but also because we could get a Marineland Package. Yes, I’m admitting we went to Marineland but that was before the Toronto Star’s expose and as any parent can attest, its jingle was burned into the heads of our children! The same hotel offered many other packages so clearly that was a part of its marketing strategy.

I believe the Marineland package was its top seller. When researching, I didn’t see any other Marineland packages. So the lessons here are to offer packages that get people to stay in town after they’ve seen the falls and offer unique packages that your competitors don’t have.

2. Get noticed

I’m afraid I don’t have a great Clifton Hill photo but trust me when I say that everywhere you look businesses, restaurants and tourist attractions are all doing everything possible to grab your attention and get you to give them some business. It’s filled with large characters, billboards and lots of lights and neon. Some may call it tacky but there’s no doubt that it had a sense of vibrancy and created a feeling that it was the place to be. Inevitably, something draws you in and you spend some of your hard earned cash.

The Skywheel dominates the area due to being near the top of the hill and its size. It draws you in to an area with many other attractions, shops and restaurants. Yes, we went on a ride thanks to our hotel package!

3. Location is everything!

Location, location, location! The upside down house certainly is an attention grabber but if we hadn’t seen it from the Skywheel we would not have ventured down the side street that it was on. I’m sure it’s not as busy as it could be due to its location.

4. Give people a chance to spend more money before they leave

I’m not talking souvenirs though I could be. I’m talking about giving people a chance to upgrade to a more expensive option. We first saw it after our Maid of the Mist trip. There was a booth before the exit that gave people an option to upgrade to an Adventure Pass and allowed people to buy other experiences offered by the Niagara Parks Commission. At Marineland, the offer was to turn your day pass into a season pass. The marketing lesson is that if you catch people when they are happy with what you’re offering you can get them to spend money they didn’t plan on spending. I’m sure many never use the full package and so the operators come out ahead.

5. Offer contests

People love winning free things. I know I do! A contest is a great way to collect information about your customers that can help you target your marketing efforts. It can also be a way to grow your mailing/e-mail list. I’d suggest though that it’s better to have people opt-in to receive mailings than forcing them to opt-out.

6. Use co-marketing / coupons

There were a few groups of businesses that were obviously working together. I’m not sure if they shared owners or developers or were brought together by common interest. It really doesn’t matter because I’m sure it helped encourage using the other businesses in their group rather than similar options nearby. For instance, we went on the Skywheel because three of us got on for free thanks to our hotel package. But we needed to buy a fourth ticket. On the back of that ticket was a coupon for a discount at the souvenir store nearby. But coupons were also in booklets we got from the hotel and other places. So there were many opportunities for people to get coupons to encourage their spending to a certain area. The lesson here is to look for common interests for co-marketing opportunities and to look for opportunities to create a win for each of the participating businesses.

7. Don’t promise more than you can deliver

Overall we enjoyed our trip very much. We were also happy with our hotel that was conveniently located across from the Skywheel and dinosaur min-golf.

The only glitch was the breakfast that came with our room. The experience was not very pleasant and I heard many others sharing that review. The room wasn’t built for that purpose and so it was too small and crowded for the number of people that it was expected to hold. There were lots of lines especially for the self-serve waffle stations. It felt more like a survival of the fittest scenario that a meal. There were few if any staff present except to bring in more feed. In one case, the muffins came out of a nice basket and into an ugly plastic dispenser. In retrospect, I would’ve preferred to pay for breakfast than to take the free option.

I’m sure the hotel felt it needed to offer free breakfast to compete against other hotels doing the same thing. But it would have been better if it had resisted. Maybe it should find a better way to enhance guests experience such as partnering with a breakfast restaurant. But instead they promised more than they could deliver and left a sour taste in guest mouths.