Spooktacular ideas to celebrate Halloween at your tourism company

Celebrate Halloween at your tourism company

Updated September 2021 – Halloween can be the smile and fun we all need in what has been a challenging time for tourism. Whether you are currently running tours or just communicating with your guests on social media – Halloween is a great opportunity to engage with your customers and put a smile on their dials! This year, take advantage of this frightfully fun season at your tour and activity company and use social media to engage with your customers. Here’s our Halloween ideas for tourism operators:

Celebrating Halloween with your customers

There are many ways to incorporate Halloween into your tour business! Here are a few Halloween tour ideas that you may want to consider:

  • Get in the theme: On and around Halloween, you might like to decorate your office, check in counters or tour buses in a spooky theme: think cobwebs, pumpkins and scary skeletons! You could also have your staff dress up in Halloween themes. Most of these decorations and costumes can be bought from the dollar store and can then be saved for use the next year or get creative and use something you already have at home!
  • Treats and eats: You might like to offer your guests some Halloween treats before, during or after the tour. Depending on the type of tour you run, this could be anything from store-bought sweets to homemade Halloween cookies or even cocktails. Your customers will appreciate the thought and these enhancements to their tour experience! If you want to go the extra mile, you could even partner with a local restaurant to include a Halloween feast. Business owners in both the restaurant industry have experienced hardship due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and Halloween could be a great opportunity for joint promotion! 
  • Up the scare factor: If possible, you might like to tweak your tour or itinerary to make it Halloween themed. You could create a Halloween tour or just amend your current tour to visit local attractions that are celebrating Halloween. For example, many zoos and museums will run special events like a pop-up spider exhibition. 

Whilst the above might just sound like a little fun, a little goes a long way in terms of customer’s experience! And who knows? It may encourage a great review, repeat visit or a recommendation to a friend.  

Celebrating Halloween with your staff

The fun doesn’t have to end with your customers! There are also a few ways you can celebrate Halloween with your staff, especially after such a tough year so far in tourism. It might really put a smile on their dial! Here are a few ideas: 

  • Come together: use Halloween as an opportunity to come together as a team and do an activity, share a meal or just have a few drinks. We all know it’s been a tough industry to be in lately and taking some time for fun and dressing up could really motivate your staff and bring a smile to their faces.
  • Dress to impress: host a Halloween dress-up competition either during the day whilst your employees are at work or at your separate Halloween event. There are hundreds of costume ideas online (both that you can make your own or that you can buy in-store). You might like to have a prize for the winner and celebrate the competition on your social media accounts.
  • Give back: volunteering and giving back to our community is proven to be good for our mental health. You might like to organise your staff to dress up and either serve at a soup kitchen or visit a seniors home- whatever cause you are passionate about! Or you could make up some Halloween themed lolly bags and drop them off at a children’s or community center. This is also a fantastic team-building opportunity as you unite to help those less fortunate. 

Celebrating Halloween virtually

You don’t have to miss out on all the fun if your tours aren’t currently operating! Virtual celebrations and events are part of the new norm and they could be a great opportunity to interact with your guests and offer them something totally different! You could create a virtual Halloween- themed tour depending on the type of tours you normally run. Some ideas are below!

  • Spooky night tour: If you are a museum, Zoo or an attraction, you might like to run a spooky, virtual tour of your venue at night. You could decorate your venue with cobwebs and other accessories and have your staff pop up in costume to spook your guests or tell them some spooky, unknown facts. 
  • Foodie tour: if you generally run food or drink tours or if you are just a foodie in general, bring this to your online experience! You could host a virtual Halloween-themed cocktail making, cooking class or even a pumpkin carving competition. The opportunities are endless! 

Do something different: No matter what tours you normally run, how about a virtual experience to offer your customers something different? This could be anything from an online escape room to a virtual city tour where you can spook out your participants by sharing scary stories that happened in your city.

Celebrating Halloween with your marketing

Promoting your tour and activity company on social media is serious business, but you shouldn’t be afraid to have a little bit of fun every once in a while. Those who are following your page on Facebook or Instagram are looking to connect with the more human side of your business, and holidays are a great time to let loose on your social pages. Plus, when you showcase your silly side, you’ll be standing out from the rest of the tour and activity providers might just be sharing boring, old content.

You want to be the company that is different, because this proves that you are going to offer an authentic experience during your tours and activities as well! It doesn’t have to be limited to social media either. You could use your database to send out some Halloween inspired emails. We love this idea: how about a virtual trick or treat campaign via email? Participants could randomly be given a ‘treat’ in the form of a free tour or a discount to use for themselves or family and friends. 

Halloween ideas for your social pages

Consider these spooktacular posts this Halloween:

  • A Halloween Costume Contest — Encourage your tourists to wear costumes while on their tours during the month of October. Take photos and post them on your page. The contestant who gets the most likes or comments at the end of the month wins a prize!
  • Stage Spooky Photo Posts — Use Halloween props and decorations to stage haunted photos around your property. For example, you could set up a skeleton driving the tour bus and take a picture with a creepy filter to post to Instagram.
  • Create a Special Halloween Promotional Code — Halloween itself may not be your busiest day of the year, so generate some extra revenue by offering a discount code for those who want to book with you on October 31.

Remember: each platform appeals to different types of users

You will want to adapt your Halloween social media strategy based on the platform that you are using at the time. Instagram users, for example, are really just in it for the images. This would be the right platform for those freakishly fun photos you staged. Facebook users, on the other hand, are more interested in videos, promotional information and contests. When you use the right content on the right platform, you’ll get better results.

Social media is one of the most powerful marketing channels available to you as a tour and activity operator, and it’s also one of the most affordable ways to promote your business. By taking advantage of holiday hype during the Halloween season, you will be able to improve your brand recognition among your followers and connect with your customers on a more personal level.

If you enjoyed this article then follow the Rezdy blog. There are a lot of marketing tools and resources designed with businesses like yours in mind.

If you’re currently on the lookout for a booking software that can help you support your growth, start a FREE 21-day trial with Rezdy or book a free demo with us today.

Image credit: Rawpixel

 

Start free trial

Enjoy 21 days to take a look around and see if we are a good fit for your business.

Get started today

No obligations, no catches, no limits, nada

activity tour business
section break