Summer Strategies: Smart Ways to Use Special Offers to Maximize Peak Season Revenue

Summer brings more travelers, more opportunities, and more potential revenue for your experience business. But how do you capture that demand effectively?

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Special Offers help you do exactly that. They attract travelers, fill slower time slots, and give you control over your booking patterns. With special offers, you can create discounts that work for your specific business needs. Here’s how to make them work for you.

Three principles for a smarter summer

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1. Think beyond just filling seats. Summer isn't about getting as many bookings as possible – it's about getting the right bookings at the right times. Treat your calendar like a puzzle, where each offer solves a specific problem, like a slow Tuesday morning or a gap between tours.
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2. Understand your summer customers. Summer travelers act differently than off-season visitors. They're often more spontaneous, have tighter schedules, different budgets, and make decisions faster. Tailor your offers to meet their needs.
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3. Think long-term. The strategies you test and the customer data you collect this summer will become the foundation for a stronger business all year. What you learn in July sets the stage for October and beyond.
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Know your numbers (before you do anything)

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Your best strategies are hiding in your own booking data. Before you create any offers, take a look at your patterns and ask yourself these three questions: 

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• Where are my golden hours? Identify the days and times people book without hesitation at full price. Protect these at all costs. 
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• What are my revenue slowdowns? Pinpoint the quiet spots or periods – the time that costs you money but brings in little revenue. These are your biggest opportunities.
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• Where is my competitive edge? What can you offer that others can't? Is it flexibility, a unique time slot, or an experience perfect for a specific type of traveler?
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Once you know this, you know exactly where to aim your offers.

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Five offer ideas to run this summer

Here are five strategic approaches to use Special Offers that you can implement right away. 
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1. Pull weekend demand into your week. Weekends fill up fast, but what about weekdays? Pull demand from the weekend by offering a discount on Mondays or Thursdays. You’ll tempt flexible travelers, freeing up your prime weekend slots for full-price bookings.

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2. Catch the post-event crowd. When a big local festival or concert ends, visitors are often looking for what's next. Be their answer. Set up an offer that starts right after a major event to capture travelers when they're ready to book something new.
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3. Reward advance bookings. Summer bookings often happen last-minute. If they are making it hard to plan your cash flow and staffing, use an Early Bird offer to reward customers for booking in advance and create urgency.
 

4. Fill last-minute cancellations. Even with great planning, you'll have last-minute cancellations and empty seats. It doesn’t have to be a total loss. Use a last-minute offer to fill it. These last-minute bookers usually want solutions, not just low prices. They want an experience, and they want it now. 
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5. Launching something new. Have a new tour time or route you want to try? Offers are a low-risk way to test the waters before making bigger commitments. For a brand-new activity, offer a significant discount on the first 20-30 bookings to gather crucial reviews and build momentum.

Best practices for effective offers

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For an offer to work, it needs to feel like a genuine opportunity. Follow these guidelines:

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✓ Offer a clear incentive: A discount of at least 10% is a good starting point.
✓ Create urgency: Limit the offer to 30 days or less.
✓ Focus on the near future: Travel dates within the next 60 days, to encourage immediate action.
✓ Be strategic: Don't discount everything. Apply offers only to the specific dates, times, or activities you want to boost.
✓ Adjust as you go: Monitor your demand and profit margins, and don't be afraid to tweak your discount percentages.

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Recommended read: How to set up special offers

Your next step

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You don't have to do everything at once. Pick one approach that tackles your biggest summer challenge – maybe empty weekday slots or needing more advance bookings. Test it for a few weeks, measure the results in Analytics, and build from there.

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Our data shows strategic offers can increase bookings by up to 25%. 

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Ready to try a special offer? Create your first offer here →‍