If you’re anything like me, this year has flown before your eyes and now it’s almost 2022. As we approach the end of 2021, the holiday season is slowly creeping up on us all. For some, this is a time full of festivity, but for others, the thought of the new year approaching is all too much.

This season brings about great opportunity for businesses to employ marketing endeavors before the new year. The planning stage however is short, giving little opportunity to organize what will happen and when it will happen.

Holiday retail sales in 2020 reached $789.4 billion in the US, despite the pandemic and between 2018 and 2020, grew by over $66 billion. These numbers are set to continue to grow during 2021, as online shopping demands increase, rising by 6.4 million between 2019 and 2021.

Byron Bay is one of the most popular beach destinations in Australia. Located within this destination is the luxury accommodation and venue hire Koonyum Range Retreat.  In order to not be lost in the noise of Byron’s multitude of accommodation listings, Marketing Eye, was approached to help with the digital campaigns and deliver a strategy for their rapidly growing business. The marketing strategy design consisted of related themed advertising of postcards and business cards and a newly developed website, which had the added capabilities of booking online. The marketing efforts were to showcase the destination as its most luxurious self and entice holiday makers to wind down and enjoy the retreat.

Thailand is a well-known tourist hot spot, with over 39 million visitors each year.  However, it hasn't always been so popular and the Tourism Authority of Thailand needed a new approach to increase those numbers. As the outsourced marketing department, Marketing Eye created a branding strategy for enticing tourists to visit. The strategy focused on branding and implemented a new logo “Amazing Thailand’ and tagline ‘Always Amazes You’. We went further with developing an information workshop for trade members, where a questionnaire was developed and a certificate of completed designed and implemented.

As part of the website development, visually appealing images of destinations were included to amaze potential tourists and feed their travel bug. The strategy designed was also to ensure consistency and cohesiveness across all marketing platforms that were created, which meant business cards and print media included the new brand identity and tagline. 

I've written pages and pages of notes whilst lying by the pool. I have recorded podcast after podcast in my hotel room whilst awaiting dinner engagements, meeting up with friends or going to the beach. And, I've written a new business plan, marketing strategy and information memorandum - all in one week.

Now, that may not seem like a holiday to most people, but as an entrepreneur, having a holiday is more about letting my body relax and freeing my mind from any stresses. If ideas and innovations flow from being in this relaxed state, then jotting down some notes, really isn't too difficult at all.

If we didn’t know it before, we sure know it now. Technology has taken over the world. Soon, this blog won’t need me to type up stories every day. I will be replaced by a piece of technology that comes up with new and innovative stories all by itself – and it will be funnier, more interesting and less expensive.