Who Are You Really Competing With?

Sometimes its easy to identify the competition, and at other times it can be daunting. It’s easy to think that other travel choices are the only competition. But are they? In 2009, many would argue that home, sweet home was the most serious challenger to every destination, resort and tourist attraction.

While direct competitors are obvious and worth noting, at earlier stages of the purchase cycle the consumer is often considering options that aren’t so plain to see. It’s at these early stages when inspiration plays the biggest role and can move your brand from a sea of choices to the destination of choice.

Before their first Wanderlust Baggage Check, Windham Mountain viewed neighboring Hunter Mountain as their chief rival (our research shows that resorts in Southwestern Vermont are numbers 1-3. Hunter didn’t even make the top five). This had a major impact on the brand positioning, messaging, media mix and their business -- four consecutive years of visitor and repeat visitor growth.

Before their first Wanderlust Baggage Check, Howe Caverns viewed Six Flag’s Great Escape amusement park to be their top competitor (number one is television, followed by video games, computers, Gameboy, iPod and the mall). Now that they know better, they’ve been able to turn around a decade of declining attendance (despite the recession’s negative impact on travel) and actually grow their business in 2009.

Once you know who your competition is, you can figure out how they (and your brand) fit into the consumer’s preference set. The process we use at Wanderlust is quite simple: review their marketing communications, reverse-engineer each competitor’s current brand positioning and ask consumers what other brands they consider and why. Using this methodology, it quickly becomes apparent which brands consumer are emotionally engaged with and which are commodity plays. Hopefully, your brand fits into the former space.

The last step in measuring up the competition is defining, from the consumer’s perspective, the competitive space and finding the emotional opportunity for your brand — something we call fondly, The Sweet Spot. By dividing the market into four quadrants and plotting each competitor on the chart, it’s easy to determine where it’s crowded with competitors and where opportunity abounds.