-
Miners Camp
CASE STUDY:
Situated on the Queen Charlotte track at Endeavour Inlet, Miners Camp provides weary travellers a cost effective place to rest their head after a day tramping. The uniqueness of Minors Camp, their sustainable focus and ‘paddock to plate’ inspired menu provides travellers with a unique experience. The provided accommodation comes with family friendly activities for the children including feeding the farm animals and swimming in the Sounds waters.
Prior to COVID hitting, Miners Camp saw a steady flow of international guests walking the track. When COVID struck, the majority of their business was wiped out, prompting the owners to connect with the Regional Business Network Programme.
Support Through the Regional Business Partnership Programme
When Tracey of Directional Tourism first met the Miners Camp owners, there was a crash course of learning required to understand the existing business model and how the different layers of product were set up, plus working through the financials. There was a limited time of support to achieve a monstrous result. Identified tasks were broken up in three areas: Sales Strategy which included pricing, profitability and yield management, Marketing Strategy which included the website rebuild, and Opportunities.
Being Able to Make Better Business Decisions
Working through a series of processes to identify what was needed to break even, Tracey learned what was thought to be the most profitable product offering, in fact wasn’t. Tracey showed Miners Camp how to map out the seasonal profitability of the business so that better business decisions could be made. One business decision was to introduce an online reservation system to streamline the booking process and cut back on administration time. A series of Property Management Systems were presented, and Directional Tourism supported the implementation of the systems.
Visibility of a Business
Due to the nature of the business, budgets were tight but there was a need to improve visibility and the information available to potential guests. First steps were to improve visibility through channels that Miners Camp could control, and provide them with the tools to do so. This started with setting a regular schedule on Facebook and Instagram using a content creation plan and strategy.
Phase two was moving the website from Square Space and rebuilding on a platform that was user friendly. wix.com gave all the control back to Miners Camp. Whilst we don’t always recommend that people build their own websites, when budgets are small, and enthusiasm is high we are all for it.
Point of Difference
Once the website was live, the reservation system was integrated and the final focus was to share with the world the unique nature of Miners Camp. We worked on concepts to encourage people to stay longer than one night, marketing to track walkers and people craving a digital detox, and to those wishing to experience and learn something of a sustainable way of living.
