How Courtney World Travel uses its window as a key marketing tool

The team at Courtney World Travel take pride in creating imaginative and captivating displays to adorn their shop window, which have won local awards and regularly generate bookings.

The family-run agency has been a fixture on Tewkesbury high street for more than 30 years, and the large window in the listed building it calls home has hosted an abundance of travel-inspired scenes.

Travel consultant Sibyl Brandon-Jones explains: “We’re a small office, but have one really large window with a shelf at the bottom, so it’s like a stage, and we really enjoy dressing it.”

An illuminated winter wonderland is currently taking centre stage, starring soft toy huskies courtesy of Hurtigruten, alongside polar bears, reindeer and delicate snowflakes stuck to the window. Brandon-Jones explains that while the team enjoy being creative with props, their artistic flair is often borne out of necessity.

“Suppliers want us to do promotions, but often they don’t have products we can use in the window,” she explains. “Many only have A4 posters available, but we can’t just use them, as they won’t draw people in. So if we can’t get the materials we create them ourselves.”

Most of the window dressings are created on a very modest budget. Last month a selection of posters and an Italian flag from Typically Italian were transformed into a visual feast thanks to the addition of spaghetti from the local Poundland and a string of garlic bulbs. “That display was up for 10 days and generated two bookings from customers who didn’t realise we sold Italy until they saw the window,” Brandon-Jones explains.

The team have won numerous accolades for their creative work, and regularly scoop the silver title in the town’s annual best-dressed window competition.

In November their Remembrance Sunday window received the Town Hall’s best window award, thanks to a huge Union Jack flag and lots of poppies.

Many of the seasonal displays are themed around travel-related celebrations, and in autumn crisp orange and red leaves graced the window, promoting fall in Canada. Tewkesbury locals will see a Valentine’s Day creation in February, highlighting Rome and Venice. The hearts will then quickly be whisked away and replaced by red lanterns for Chinese New Year.

Fruits of their labour
It often takes one of the store’s six agents around half a day to empty the window, clean the glass and set up the new arrangement. After Christmas they will get ready for the peak selling period with a long-haul beach scene, to inspire passers-by to make a booking to warmer climes.

Events are regularly held in-store, and the window is a key part of each initiative. When the agency held an Antigua and Barbuda promotion with the tourism authority and Classic Collection Holidays, everyone dressed up in pirate costumes and customers sipped rum punch from hollowed out pineapples.

The window was decorated with a Playmobil pirate ship (pictured left) purchased on eBay (which the consultants diligently built themselves), and Playmobil characters were borrowed from a member of staff’s grandchildren. Barbuda’s pink beaches were recreated with a bag of pink sand from Mothercare, topped with a toy pirate’s chest and an inflatable palm tree.

This spectacular seashore proved popular with passing children, and Brandon-Jones explains: “It was wonderful watching them stop and look at everything.

It generated a lot of interest in the Caribbean.”

Fancy dress costumes were unleashed again for Halloween, and a window bursting with pumpkins, spiders and cobwebs helped promote trips to watch Wicked with Super Break.

However not all of the displays are travel-themed.

Each July the town hosts the Tewkesbury Medieval Festival, complete with a medieval market and a huge battle re-enactment. To celebrate, Courtney World Travel erects a large medieval flag in the window, and Brandon-Jones says: “We don’t link this one to travel, but there is lots of footfall in the town, and like all the windows, it really helps generate interest.”