When Dan and I moved to North Portugal to start our simple life, we had a vision. Initially, we dreamt of flower farming and a self-sustainable life. Because to us, nothing is more relaxing than surrounding ourselves with beauty and nothing is more beautiful than seeing a smile on someone’s face when handed a glorious bouquet of bloom.
Yet, after spending our first winter here while waiting for the Spanish flip to sell, it became evident to us that our context was not ideal to set up a thriving cut flower business. Indeed, the Tras-os-Montes region thrives on tourism, not flower wholesale. So we had to rethink our plan. After all, if we’re going to set up a business here and invest time and money, it must bear fruit at some point because this is our retirement plan.
Without a doubt, living in a hotel for 10 ½ months gave us much insight into tourism. But more importantly, in-depth knowledge of a potential target market, how folks travel, what they like to do when they visit Tras-Os-Montes and why they come to the region. By observing our surroundings and living here we were able to identify potential market gaps.
Hey, you can take the girl out of marketing but marketing will always be in me as it is one of my passions after all.
So what do we know about folks who visit Tras-os-Montes?
I somewhat divided our target audience into 2 potential segments. Those who make a pit stop and those who want to unwind.
What do I know about those who make a pit stop?
- They are often on their way to Algarves or they are going back home (France or UK) where they live in large cities.
- They travel by car and have big luxurious vehicles like BMW SUVs.
- They often have small and medium dogs.
- They often feel disappointed when they arrive here because they think it’s too cold, and there’s not much to do. Little amenities like grocery shops, etc.
- They have a good expendable income and want to spend cash.
- They rarely stay more than 2 nights and are bored out of their mind. Some have even cut their stay short because there’s little to do here.
- Most of the time, they stay in their cabins.
- Generally, they are middle-aged couples 55+ years old.
- Often they have professions that require long studies, like vet (we met so many vets on holiday it’s crazy actually).
- They rarely come more than once.
What do I know about those who want to unwind?
- They too travel by cars, but generally have smaller Peugeot cars and sometimes even eco-vehicles.
- Generally, they are 35+ to 54+ years old and have an active-mind set, love hiking, biking etc.
- They often have larger dogs and sometimes more than 1.
- The region attracts both young families and couples.
- Couples typically are tempted to be interested in permaculture, agriculture etc. In fact, we even met a couple who were looking to buy a vineyard in the region once. Really cool people btw.
- Their hobbies besides hiking and biking include reading, social media, and indulging in good local produce.
- Generally, this target market stays in our hamlet for 5+ days.
- This particular segment comes mostly from Porto or Lisbon. However, we have stumbled upon many Belgium from the Flemish region too.
- Their profession tends to be more manual, such as welders, gardeners, or mid-level management in large corporations.
- Most of the time, these guys are out and about but will indulge in local wine and cuisine in the evening.
- They are regular to the region and often make it a point to come back year after year.
- They love to visit our waterfall – and thankfully it’s not too far from our land.
How to appeal to both potential target markets?
While the pit stoppers and the “unwinders” seem to have little in common at first. A few things unite them. While one cannot generalise in life when it comes to marketing and setting up a business making assumptions are key.
Gardening
- 55+ French and English tourists typically enjoy gardening. Having lived in the UK for 4 years, I was stunned by the number of TV shows featuring gardening. “the Chelsea flower show” is a good example. Another thing that surprised me from my time in the UK is the number of 55+ who’ll visit gardens (like Hampton court) over the weekend for tea and scones.
- 35+ to 54+ years old with an active mindset and love gardening too. But they want to get their hands dirty and want to learn about gardening techniques.
Love for animals
Both target markets love animals and their dogs need space to burn some energy. Yet, the love for animals is also strongly noticeable in young families and their kids. In fact, our neighbour Theresa told us that often she’ll have tourists who’ll just walk by the animal pen by her house just to look at her chickens and rabbits.
So for us, it became evident that we needed to give these folks a place that fulfilled their need for outdoor space because often in hotels dogs need to be kept in leach. While one audience is happy to let their dogs run free in the “wild” the other needs a more structured place to walk them.
Also, if we want our public garden to attract tourists. It seems evident to us that it needed to have cool animals. Because we think that young families are not likely to come and visit us for our blooms, but would be thrilled to see cool chickens and rabbits in an idyllic environment.
A need for supplies and local products
- The 55+ need better amenities in the village to be happy with their time here. Because they are travelling through Tras-Os-Montes they often don’t bring groceries with them or their supplies have run out by the time they reach North Portugal.
- 35+ to 54+ need better access to local products.
A business that fulfils the requirements of everyone.
Keeping this in mind, we decided to build a little ice cream kiosk that could serve the needs of both audiences during the daytime and evening. This is why our kiosk will be more than a place to buy one-of-a-kind magnums. But it’ll also feature local produce and artisan. It must the said, I love cooking – but I know enough about restaurants to not have one of my own. I also love gardening, while I’m still green in this area, the main area our business needed to fulfil was our own interest.
But let’s look closely at how our business will fulfil the requirement of each target audience.
Opening a farm kiosk and an ice creme shop will help everyone. Indeed, the 55+ can get basic supplies in the hamlet, perhaps even buy souvenirs (like handmade pottery, soaps, and candles). And the 35+ to 54+ can discover local products and buy fresh ingredients from our gardens for evening snacks.
Yet we also wanted to maximise the sales opportunity for each target audience. We know that summers are getting hotter every year and during the daytime, nothing could be more refreshing than to buy locally-made ice cream while walking the garden and checking out our cool flock.
At first, we wanted to have a more traditional ice cream bar “Italian gelato style”. But let’s be frank, flies are a big problem here. And the Gelato freezer needs a lot of space too. Opting to create one-of-a-kind magnums with local products with limit the building expenses, and running costs, because magnums need less freezer space than big ice cream toads. Thus, we’ll have more space to feature local goods and to sell artisan crafts, maybe our own one day too.
Selling local goods online is also part of our strategy. In fact, we know that YouTube pairs well with online sales. So at some point in 2023-2024, we’ll create a little online shop on our site for people around the world to have access to Tras-Os-Montes products and crafts.
Our main challenges
While we think we have a solid business plan. We are not blind to the challenges our location brings. In fact, we are not located at the heart of our hamlet and this could be a problem. So we’ll need to rely a lot on hotels for publicity.
We will also need to invest in good signs and perhaps even leaflets that’ll be left in the 2 hotels and several guest houses around surrounding villages, this way people will know we exist.
Being on YouTube can also help us drive foot traffic to our location. However, we’ll never disclose our exact location on YouTube. We would not want people to book their trip with the expectation that we’ll be available for them at all times. We’re always happy to point our viewers to hotels in proximity. And once they are in the area, then we can be available during business hours if that makes sense depending on the projects we’re working on.
Another thing that’s worth mentioning is that Daniel and I are digital nomads. Thus, we work online to generate income to re-invest in the garden and to sustain ourselves. Yet, a neat thing about the sector we work in is that business is slow in the summertime. This means that while the online gaming sector slows down in June, July, and August we can still generate an income until YouTube (hopefully) really picks up for us (in maybe 3 years’ time). Our hope is that at some point we’ll be able to sustain ourselves only from Youtube, the Shop and the glamping site which will come in phase 5 of our project.
So there you have it, the reasoning behind our business strategy and the whys we’re setting up a public garden with an ice cream kiosk. We hope you’ve enjoyed this article and we look forward to updating you on the next phases of our project.
