Our Tourism packages – Storytelling

Challenge

I participate in a small start-up offering thematic tourism packages. Each package contains elements that  are “hidden” from the publicly-available description and plan of the package. These elements are meant  to surprise the participant and create a unique experience during the participation. Our challenge is to  test for each package two things at the same time – the appeal of the narrative of the plan that will  become available to potential customers and the outcome of the “enhanced” experience they will  actually live. Before launching a package that requires a lot of preparation and implementation (i.e.  finding service providers, preparing events, etc.) we want to understand the reaction of the audience in  order to re-form, advance or put-on-the-shelf the idea. Finally, the interest shown by the segment of the  customers we address could also be tested.

Selection

Storytelling is a methodology that fits perfectly in the character of our products / services. The  characteristics of the method – the plot and the theme and the characters – provide the best way to  present the contents of our offering that involves History, Mythology, and Culture of the places to be  visited. Storytelling “transfers” the audience to the era and the life of the place. Our intention is to have  out testers take the trip without being there actually. Storytelling can be used throughout the steps and  the functions of a design thinking approach of an issue. Our team has chosen to use this tool mainly in the  “What wows” phase where initially designed themes are tested to decide whether they will be further  developed or put on-hold for further review. Storytelling helps us see the expressions on the faces of the  audience, their interest on specific parts of the story-package we present and finally receive their  comments and suggestions on what is additionally expected.

Application

The main steps that we consider for testing our designed products through storytelling involves selection  of the group of participants, arranging the place – physical or virtual – where the event will take place,  determining the narrator among our team members and the exact script to be used, and finally the  collection of feedback from the participants.

In a specific case we have named “Telemachia”, (the trip of Telemachus to ask comrades of his father  Ulysses’ whereabouts), we presented the story of the trip to three groups of seven people selected to  meet criteria of the segment to be addressed. Participants of these gatherings of storytelling listened to  the story twice. The first one referred to the trip as it would be offered to the market. At the end of this  first narration they were requested to rate the offering based on the content and the way it was  presented and vote on whether they would buy the package or not. The second one got them more into  the details of the story and revealed the surprises that they would live and participate in. Then another  round of rating and voting took place. The results of the rating and voting were analysed by our team to  examine the effect the probability of this specific offer to do well in the market and have a positive  outcome leading to recurrent customers and word of mouth spreading of our offerings.

Insight

We have noticed that the way the product is presented by storytelling creates different reactions to the  audience and is dependable to many factors (i.g. how elegant the narration is, the duration of it, the  excitement of the plot, etc.). Since storytelling on a product is different from the actual offer/trip we sell  we should be very careful in arranging our stories to excite but at the same not create expectations that  cannot be met. Through the process of storytelling we have identified skills of our team and who fits  better to the role of designing, presenting our products. Utilising this Design Thinking tool, made us re- define and refine our approaches and still keeps us alerted on reviewing our methods and thoughts on  the way we work.

Approach

Apart from the above mentioned application of storytelling we have thought of two different ways to use  the tool. One has been about expanding the group of participants and providing a written story to closed  groups of social media friends and their friends. The second one was to keep the smaller groups and  change the change the “impersonal” rating/voting collection of feedback by targeted discussion on the  pros and cons of the stories and the offered travel packages. The particularity of our offering leads us  towards the second approach and we are working on how qualitative information and insight form our  audience will be incorporated to our products.

Storytelling b itself as a method has helped us advance our imagination and the ways of approaching our  customers. It has changed our personal approach to life and we capture ourselves many times discussing  with parables and paradigms.

