Intro (00:01):
Pixie Dust & Profits is a podcast for small business owners who love Disney and want to sprinkle some of that magic onto their own businesses. Join your host, Nicole Boucher and Yasmine Spencer. As they explore the mouse’s $12.6 billion operation and break down exactly how you can apply these big scale concepts to your own business.

Yasmine (00:25):
Hello and welcome to this week’s bonus episode of Pixie Dust & Profits. I’m Yasmine Spencer, and I’m coming to you solo for a special holiday episode where we’re going to dive into some really interesting trends that we see at Disneyland and Disney World. And the trends that I’m speaking to specifically are fall discounts. And in fact, even winter discounts right now, it’s December. And it is by far the busiest season at Disney world. And during this time of year, you would be hard pressed to find any kind of discount or special offer because during the holiday season, especially around Christmas, that’s basically one of the few times that Disney approaches almost in your capacity at their parks, because who doesn’t want to spend a magical Christmas at Disney or, you know, Thanksgiving too. I mean, I would love to though, I think the crowds might sort of turn me off.

Yasmine (01:23):
In fact, I’m not the biggest fan of crowds. I mean, who is, but I plan my Disney trips around the quiet seasons in the low seasons and around September to, I would say like October and then after Halloween to November and then January and February, I mean, I feel like that’s Nicola and I’s favorite time to go to Disney world because the weather is cool. It speaks to us as northerners and you know, everyone’s back at school. The parks are pretty quiet and wait times are, you know, they’re there, but they’re a lot lower. So every fall I tend to get tons of emails from Disney, with discounts. Often their room discount. You can get to 25 to 35% off of your room, depending on which room category that you use, whether it’s value moderator deluxe. And sometimes you get Disney dining offers where you actually get free dining.

Yasmine (02:13):
If you pay full price for a room, which for a lot of families, especially if you’re big families that can be a pretty good deal because let me tell you that eating a Disney can get pretty, pretty pricey, but I mean, why does Disney offer these discounts? Well, it’s kind of obvious. W when people are back to school, crowd levels are a lot lower. So they want to drum up interest in the parks. In fact, Disney’s lowest season tends to be in like late August, early September, because it’s hurricane season the risk of another massive hurricane hitting Florida can be really scary to a lot of vacation goers, especially the vacation guards who don’t go to Disney as often as, you know, we might, because it’s a big investments, a big trip, and let’s be real. You don’t want to spend three or four of your trip indoors because it’s pouring or raining and Disney and says that everyone stayed in their hotel rooms for safety purposes.

Yasmine (03:09):
Now we’ve talked about this in a previous episode, and Disney is actually one of the safest places to ride out a hurricane in Florida. But you know, you want to go for the parks, the atmosphere, the food food, not to be cooped up in doors all day. So that could be a huge bummer and a huge risk. So in order to maintain crowd levels and to maintain their revenue goal, Disney tries to lure you in with discounts. So what does that mean for your business and what can you learn here? Well, it’s super interesting as Disney’s busiest seasons, which tend to be around the holidays and even the summer, because you know, you don’t have to worry about pulling your kids out of school. Families tend to do a lot of vacation time then is the exact reason that it’s a slow period for our clients, because everyone is sort of out of office.

Yasmine (03:57):
They’re trying to enjoy time with their family, enjoy the beautiful weather. I mean, for us northerners, we spend as much time outdoors in the summer when we can, because it gets cold, real fast around here. And it’s kind of hard to, you know, keep people engaged, keep them focused when they’re kind of off their devices and computers and enjoying the great outdoors and their families. So what one thing does he does is knowing that these slow periods are coming up, they prime their audience with offers in advance of them to get them interest in, to get them to commit. So if you know, when things quiet down for your audience, it tends to be different for everyone. I mean for a few of my clients who are photographers summer actually tends to be a lot busier because that’s when everyone’s having wedding season and things kind of slow down in the early winter for them.

Yasmine (04:48):
So your exact slow periods may be a little bit different, but knowing, let’s say that summer’s coming up and your audience is going to be a little bit more offline than usual. You can offer promotions on your programs in April may just to get them engaged and purchasing before they sort of move into that quieter period. And you can also customize the messaging to encourage them to stay engaged. I mean, hit on their pain points. You know, that they’re busy, you know, that, you know, kids are at home for a lot of the mompreneurs and they’re, you can’t spend as much time on their computers and they want to continue to move their businesses forward. So speak to the fact that coming to your program or offer your service can help keep them on top of things and have that momentum that they normally would have let go of a little bit during that time.

Yasmine (05:39):
In fact, I’m going to speak to the Canadian offer for practicum. That Disney sends out pretty much every year. So if you don’t know the Canadian dollar and the us dollar are no longer at parody and haven’t been for awhile, in fact it typically costs Canadians 30% more if they buy anything in us dollars. So when you tack on that additional 30%, that can be a pretty tough pill to swallow because it’s not really easy on any Canadian’s wallet. So it doesn’t, he does is they offer a discount on park tickets to basically mitigate that exchange rate and make going to Disney a little bit more affordable for people North of the border. And they address that pain point because they know Canadians tend to hate paying those really high exchange fees to buy anything from the U S or to travel to the U S.

Yasmine (06:26):
So for my third and final tip, you don’t always have to discount things to bring people in during slow periods you can create new offers. So one thing that Disney does that we notice is that they’re Moonlight magic events, which are a hard ticket event, meaning you have to pay extra on top of your ticket to attend. That takes place in the evenings where you deal with a lot lower crowds. You get a lot of free treats and popcorn. This is what Nicole and I did with one of our clients, Christina, last January that tends to happen during the choir periods. And it’s another revenue source for Disney because during a time that’s already slow, you’re getting people to spend an extra, you know, a hundred or so dollars to spend a couple hours at the park, but the added bonuses that all the rides tend to be like walk ons or very minimal weights.

Yasmine (07:14):
And you can do quite a bit during that short period at the Moonlight event. So if you know that there is a special offer or program that you can offer your clients that again, address their needs and their pain points do it during your quiet periods and just make sure to sell them on it in advance so you can get them to commit before, you know, things get crazy and busy. So that’s the other way that you can bring in a bit of a cash injection during a quieter business period. So thank you so much for joining me for this special bonus episode. I hope you were able to take away a few things that you can do to really drum up business and revenue during quieter periods in your company. And if you aren’t following us on Instagram, you can do so @pixiedustandprofits. And if you’re not on our newsletter, I highly encourage you to join because that’s where we share a lot of special tips and bonus content. And this will Mark the official end of the first season of Pixie Dust & Profits. And if you want to know when the second season starts, so you can join us, you’ll want to be on our newsletter. So thank you again for joining me and I’ll see you real soon. Bye

Speaker 3 (08:28):
[Inaudible].