Giving Tourists an Experience to Remember

‘The Government should be doing something about this’ are words so easily spoken and there are times when the lack of funding is used as an excuse for poor performance.

I was recently reminded of this at a networking event when tourism was the subject of the moment. “Tourism is suffering because there is no Government money available to promote this area.” Hmm. I wonder how much Government money has already been pumped into the area over the last few years and how many people it brought to Norfolk. It is safe to assume there was a degree of success and that many people were persuaded to visit this very pleasant part of the UK, but did we do enough to make them want to come back and visit us again?

We all know that it is far cheaper to look after existing customers than to spend money on marketing trying to find new ones, business basics. So are Norfolk tourism businesses doing everything possible to give our visitors the best possible experience so that they will want to come back?

Of course the business owners may realise that customer service and the presentation of the products and premises are important but have to rely on staff to deliver.  Staff training is so often overlooked, often a new employee is told ‘this is how we do things around here’, together with a little ‘watch and learn’ and that’s it.  No wonder the standards are so low.  

There is a need for basic training and before we go back to the old argument about no Government funding available for training, let us think about how much can be learnt from those that do set the standard.  There are many businesses that perform at a high level and so much can be learnt from them. Observe shop windows and displays, compare this with the wealth of information and tutorials available on the internet, watch Mary Portas on video. Visit up market restaurants to see how they operate, you may be running a beach café but you can still offer a first class service, and guess what, if you do that your customers may just choose to come back to you day after day while they are on holiday.

Many businesses offer a first class service but others let the side down and it is a collective effort that is needed. As for the rest of us we can all play our part in making visitors feel welcome.

Let‘s all pull together to make sure that visitors to Norfolk keep coming back year after year, not because of an expensive marketing campaign but because they had such a wonderful experience.