Project Runway & The Travel Industry
By Joe Veneto, the Opportunity Guy
The best and hottest show on television, in my opinion, is Wednesday night at 10:00 on Bravo. The show Project Runway is amazing. It’s currently in its third season, and I will admit that I am a bit late to the party, as I just started watching this season.
The show begins with fifteen designers who are tasked each week with designing an outfit for a model to showcase on the runway. Each week supermodel Heidi Klum, the show’s host, along with Parson’s School of Design’s Tim Gunn, create an interesting task for the designers. Designers have strict time limits to create, sketch and execute their outfits. The creations are judged by three well-known designers, and each week one designer is eliminated.
The ceremony for elimination is both interesting and stark. The group of designers line up on the runway for individual feedback, and one by one the judges provide their feedback, anecdotes and judgments. One by one, the designers are designated in or, for one person, OUT! The eliminated designer then respectfully kisses Heidi on both cheeks, leaves the runway and off the group goes to the next task. The final three designers will create a line of clothes to be featured at Fashion Week in New York City, where a winner will be selected.
The tasks presented each week to the designers are challenging and highly creative. My favorite was the week the group was taken to a recycling center in New Jersey. Each designer was given three blue plastic bins to fill with material in a 30-minute time limit. Then, they had to create an outfit for their models using the materials. The results were innovative, to say the least. The tasks also have a time limit each week, which ups the ante. The designers produce creative and innovative ideas each week.
The Travel Industry’s main lesson from Project Runway is the ability to regularly prototype and innovate new products. What would it be like if every week or every month you and your organization developed new products, services and experiences to introduce and test for the market? The results would probably be mixed with successes, failures and a few trips back to the drawing board. However, the action of developing new products on a consistent basis would also re-orient your organization’s thinking about the marketplace and the dynamics of customers.
This change in outlook would also be the ability to be proactive and uncover the trends, needs and dynamics of today’s ever-changing consumers. The prototyping process also provides a foundation to develop a regular innovation process for products, services and experiences. It is also the road to creating a strategic competitive advantage with customers.
How often do you introduce new products to your customers? Do you currently prototype and test products before releasing them to the market? Are you plugged into the pulse of your customers and the marketplace in a proactive way? Answering yes to these questions means you are on the Travel Industry Runway with consumers.
My list of learnings from the Runway include:
- To stay ahead of the market and customer trends, you must be prototyping and testing all the time; otherwise, you will be in one day and OUT the next.
- Speed is key to getting new products into the market, done is better than perfect!
- Quantity of testing and new products will produce quality.
- To quote Buckminster Fuller, “It’s amazing what you can do when you put your mind to it!”
Joe Veneto, "The Opportunity Guy," is principal of Opportunities Unlimited, a management consulting and training company. He collaborates with organizations in Tourism, Hospitality and Service-related industries to achieve results by creating new business opportunities. His areas of specialty include sales development, innovative product development, destination marketing and customer service. Joe is a 20-year veteran of the tourism industry and has worked for national tour operators and major industry wholesalers.
Opportunities Unlimited provides management consulting services, custom designed seminars and results-oriented training workshops. Clients include government tourism agencies, marketing organizations, hotel groups, historic attractions & museums, restaurants, tour operators and others. Joe's unique industry experience enables him to create practical, results oriented programs tailored to his client’s business needs.
In addition to his consulting, Joe is a nationally recognized speaker on the Tourism & Hospitality Industries. He presents programs annually for National Associations, Regional Tourism Groups, Industry-wide Conferences and Convention & Visitors Bureaus. He has also authored several articles that have appeared in various travel trade publications.
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