How attractions use print to fill the shoulder season
Shoulder season tourism marketing is the print and promotion work a UK attraction does outside peak holidays, aimed at local and drive time audiences rather than tourists. iDO (Info Display OOH Ltd) distributes more than 5 million brochures every month across 150,000 print points and can start a distribution campaign within two days.
Sugandan Balaji
What is shoulder season tourism marketing?
Shoulder season tourism marketing is the promotional work a UK visitor attraction does in the quiet months either side of peak holidays, roughly late September to November and January to March, when tourist demand falls away and local demand has to replace it.
The problem is arithmetic. Staff rotas, opening hours and fixed costs at a visitor attraction stay where they are while admissions drop. Shoulder season marketing answers that by selling a reason to come now: a seasonal event, a members' preview, a wet weather offer or a discounted family ticket, to people close enough to act on it this weekend. Print carries the message because print can be briefed, produced and distributed inside a week.
Who should a shoulder season campaign target?
A shoulder season campaign targets local and drive time audiences, not tourists. In October the family in a holiday cottage is no longer the market for a visitor attraction. The market is households within about 30 minutes, and the shops, cafes and community sites they walk past every week.
iDO (Info Display OOH Ltd) plans that coverage from 150,000 print points across the UK, the biggest print distribution network in the UK, served by 60+ distribution centres with teams local to their own areas. For a shoulder season push, five placements do the work.
- Solus door to door leaflets across named postcode sectors
- Ultra local poster blanket of the high street: retail, food and drink, supermarkets
- Community, library and heritage sites, plus leisure centres
- Racked leaflets in the hotels and information centres that stay open year round
- Digital screens in barbershops, gyms, pubs and bars, around 500,000 impressions a week
How quickly can a print distribution campaign start?
A print distribution campaign can be on the doormat within two days of the decision to run it. iDO started a Royal Albert Hall campaign to Christmas bookers within 2 days of the tier two announcement: 6,600 addresses solus door to door across SW7 1 to SW7 5, plus 300 first class direct mail.
Short lead times matter in the shoulder season because the triggers are short notice: a wet forecast, a soft half term, a late event confirmation. The Welsh Rugby Union work ran the same way, a blanket leaflet and poster distribution across Cardiff, Newport and Swansea in three days.
| Stage | Typical lead time | Detail |
|---|---|---|
| Brief and postcode plan | Same day | Sectors, quantity, format, cycle |
| Print A5 or DL, 130 to 170gsm | 1 to 3 working days | Digital litho suits short runs |
| Delivery to distribution centre | 1 working day | 20 centres across the UK |
| Distribution begins | Within 2 days of artwork | As run for the Royal Albert Hall |
| Photographed proof on dashboard | From day one of the run | GPS tracked, geo located maps |
What should a shoulder season leaflet or poster actually say?
A shoulder season leaflet or poster should carry one offer, one date range and one reason to come indoors. Off peak audiences are not browsing a holiday. They are deciding what to do with a wet Saturday, so the offer needs to be readable from two metres on a shop window poster and understood in three seconds on a doormat.
Two iDO campaigns show the shape. The Design Museum ran solus door to door in W8 6 with an ultra local blanket of Kensington High Street, Earls Court Road and Notting Hill Gate, and saw a spike in membership applications. Trestle Theatre in St Albans took an ultra local poster blanket of every retail, food and drink, supermarket, community and heritage site in the town, and the performance was oversubscribed.
How do you prove a shoulder season campaign was delivered?
Ask for GPS tracked distribution and photographed proof of display, dated and site by site. iDO has invested over £250,000 in a reporting system that tracks the distribution run by GPS, photographs posters and leaflets in place, and publishes both to a live dashboard with geo located maps.
In a short shoulder season window that reporting is the campaign control, not an end of season formality. If a sector has not been walked by Thursday, the attraction can see it on the dashboard while the weekend is still ahead.
Frequently asked
- When is the shoulder season for UK attractions?
- For most UK visitor attractions the shoulder season runs from late September to November and again from January to March, with a short lift at February half term. These are the months when tourist numbers fall and local, drive time audiences have to carry admissions.
- How far should a shoulder season leaflet drop reach?
- Plan by drive time. Off peak audiences travel about 30 minutes for a half day out, so a shoulder season leaflet drop usually covers named postcode sectors inside that ring rather than a wide regional spread. Depth beats reach when the visit is a weekend decision.
- Can a campaign go out at short notice for wet weather?
- Yes. iDO has started distribution within 2 days of a client decision, as it did for the Royal Albert Hall across SW7 1 to SW7 5. Same day briefing, 1 to 3 days to print, then distribution from 20 centres across the UK.