Providing peak experiences and the power of premium

By Fiona Boyd |

If you read my last blog post you would know that David and I recently had a four night getaway at Hayman Island in the Whitsundays, a venue which is also hosting a major Australian leaders forum this week, that you can read all about at Business Spectator.

Our trip though was for R & R and not business thankfully though while we were there I couldn’t help but notice how many things done by the Hayman team and in delivering the Hayman experience, provided some unique insights into concepts that could be deployed in other places and other businesses.

One of these was the notion of offering a ‘peak experience’ to the customer base, not something that everyone will want to do, and the cost of it can be one of the factors that makes it exclusive, but something that can be nevertheless considered a pinnacle experience, a really neat thing to do.

On our day of arrival at Hayman Island, David and I trekked down to the reception to book a couple of adventures, one of these was to be the Chef’s Table and the other a few hours snorkeling on the reef. Chef’s Table wasn’t occurring until the night we were leaving, however there was a similar and even better experience (we were told) on offer called the Fontaine Bench.

At any one time there can be up to 500 guests at Hayman Island, and there are at least that many people again providing the labour and skill that keep things ticking over smoothely. Fontaine Bench is available for two nights a week and it’s only available to two people at a time, something David and I had not understood when we made our booking.

We booked the Tuesday night Fontaine Bench and rather than drone on about the amazing food and wine you can take a look at the menu, constructed just for us on that night, and one which changes as the Sous Chef sees fit, which can be often. The chefs at Hayman like to experiment and innovate, they have fantastic facilities at their disposal and use them to come up with new and unusual dishes.

The Fontaine Bench experience is for two people at a time and you are seated on an elevated bench at a table looking directly into the serving and preparation area of the Fontaine kitchen. La Fontaine is Hayman’s premier fine dining restaurant, where you can buy a hamburger for $150 a pop. We indeed saw a couple of these hamburgers being lovingly prepared by the Sous Chef, Anthony Healy, whose joy and delight in being in charge of the kitchen that night was simply infectious. His ingredient knowledge and ability to share it was also second to none.

Of the 12 courses we had, Anthony was able to talk us through the intricacies and ins and outs of most of them – food prepared to delight and entertain and inspire has a story and it was Anthony’s job to tell us the story of the food. It was such a great reminder to me that those who really love and know and understand what they’re doing are just so outrageously positively infectious.

But the key learning from me from the Fontaine Bench was that it’s good to have a really premium product available in your offering that can be that special one that those who use it wax lyrical about, and help bring other customers to your standard offering.

I really like the notion of having a standard offering and then a premium offering. With just about every type of product there will be a bunch of those who want and appreciate the regular experience and then a small handful who want a little bit more.

David and I spent a few weeks working with Marcus Padley who writes the fabulous stockmarket newsletter Marcus Today a few years ago, working up a renewal campaign to put a bit of spice into his subscription renewals and to remind people that his product offering really was the best of its breed. One thing we introduced after chatting to several renewing subscribers who talked Marcus up to the sky, was the Life Member category. It wasn’t cheap and the idea was more of an experiment to test the actual loyalty of these members, but we set the price at $5000 and waited to see what would happen.

Within two days there was a Life Member enquiry and subsequently sale. Two days after that another one sold, same again two days after that. We finished our stint with Marcus and this campaign, but I gained a really great insight into the mindset of the customer who really loves what you do – they will pay a bit more (or a lot more even) for a higher level of your product and maybe even a closer connection with you.

Crikey also figured this out when the founders were being sued and needed to find substantial funds even after selling their house, to pay their legal fees. They introduced the Life Member category, and lo and behold a raft of people who loved the Crikey newsletter and believed in the founder’s fight, signed up and leant their support. While there was an ideological underpinning here, the Life Members did get some special benefits: a special insider news just for them, and unique access to founder, Stephen Mayne, that other subscribers didn’t get.

It’s true that your super premium product is unlikely to ever be the core of your business, as in the Fontaine Bench, but it can be the place where you build such strong customer loyalty around your brand that these super customers become your advocates and brand warriors. And even if they don’t they’ll just secretly enjoy their premium status in your customer group, knowing that they’ve paid for the privelege, and hopefully thinking it was worth every cent.

David and Fiona with the highlight of their Fontaine Bench dinner - the Martini Igloos.

So was the highlight of our recent Hayman visit Fontaine Bench? The answer to that question is ‘yes’. What then was the highlight of Fontaine Bench? Well that would have to be the Martini Igloo, pictured. A martini sorbet served in a carved ice sculpture, each one individually made for one service only. Pinnacle, peak, premium, call it what you will, this was one experience I’ll be talking about for a very long time to come.

Photo: David Eedle

David and Fiona write about their first visit to Hayman Island in 2006 in their book Niche Content Millionaire – the story of the startup, growth and sale of their business, Arts Hub.

Niche Content Millionaire is a downloadable eBook that tells you the true story how we made millions from subscription content and membership websites.

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