Everybody in the travel industry should be thinking outside the box. Continually generating new ideas and innovating sets you apart from your competition. Although it has become a cliché phrase, still lots of companies in the travel industry are still thinking in the same traditional ways with the same mind set. Maybe your organisation as well? Is it habit, politics, lack of brainstorm sessions, laziness, comfortable routine, or you don’t have the guts. It’s time to get rid of your set routine. Trying to think outside the box or ‘flip-thinking’ as the buzzword goes– is such a big value for boosting image and revenue.
Marcel Baltus gives you three examples of his way of flip-thinking.
Flip-thinking #1
My partner has been wanting a cat for ages. A cat! So boring, it sleeps (over) 16 hours a day. No, I wanted a dog. A dog is more active, they listen well and you can teach them tricks, this looks far more fun to me. So we made a deal: When we go with retirement, Agnes gets a cat, I take a dog.
Two years ago I’m in a restaurant during a press trip abroad. Over dinner I got a message from Agnes. She sent me a photo of a cat – a blue Russian cat – with the message: “This is our new cat”. I was totally flabbergasted and also a little angry.
So when I returned home I asked a little angry: “Where is this animal?” And there he was, sitting in the corner of our bedroom, still a little scared. But it was such a beautiful, shy, grey and sweet animal, it was love at first sight. I never experienced a positive mood swing like this, and it gets even better. Blue Russian cats have the tendency to choose one person they are attached to. Guess who the lucky chosen one is? Exactly, the one who didn’t wanted him in the first place. I never thought I was going to like him – Benji – this much. I fully admit that my conceptual thinking about cats was wrong. This experience teached me to be more open for things I do not like or want in the first place – in my private life and business life. Sometimes an experience like this is needed to get you thinking differently. I hope it will happen to you.
Flip-thinking #2
Amsterdam, yuk. I’m fed-up with our capital. Fed up in the sense that 99 percent of all press and travel trade workshops take place in our capital. Come on – everybody is acting as if Amsterdam is the universe for .
I fully understand that foreign visitors like to stay in Amsterdam during their visit but at Baltus Communications we also think of the other side. The media, bloggers, travel agencies, tour operators incentive organisers etc that always have to take the same train to go to the same ‘hotspot’. It isn’t special anymore, it’s boring and average. Besides that, everything is full in the centre, overpriced and it’s really crowded.
We too have organised many many presentations and workshops in Amsterdam but we are moving away to other cities. For a few years the largest Meet the Dutch Travel Press event is now organised in the city of Utrecht and our annual City Breaks Press Event (yes we did it 6 years in Amsterdam) will now take place in Rotterdam. This is possible because we organise this press event all by ourselves so we decide – not third parties. Bye Amsterdam Hello Rotterdam. It’s all about flip-thinking.
Flip-thinking #3
National tourist boards often have ‘blinkers’ – by which I mean these gadgets they put on either side of a horse’s eyes so they cannot see the side and the rear.
We have been organizing a Winter sports press event for many years. And in doing so we approach this in a slightly different way than tourist boards. For example the French and Austrian national tourist boards each year also organise their own winter sports press events. But participants on these events only come for France and Austria. Ours is open to any winter sport region from Europe and beyond so not restricted to the borders of one country. So I much prefer to integrate the French and Austrian one into one big umbrella winter sports event rather than each country organising its own.
Our event draws many more press as we offer lots of participants from all over Europe. With the changing media scene, journalists and bloggers just do no longer have time to visit the hundred and one events being organised each month. Join forces is our credo but the travel industry is still often blinkered by ‘my region/country/destination/product attitude only’.
The photo depicts Marcel Baltus in his office reading a Dutch book on flip-thinking
