Niche Marketing Personified

Well, you could go to the website and look, but to save The Time-Challenged Reader the effort, here’s a summary:

Approaching Mona.jpg

Contemporary design, avant-garde artworks from the MONA collection, and designer furniture, a heated infinity lap pool, sauna and gymnasium on a 3.5 hectare private peninsula that curves into the Derwent. Of course, you’re also right next door to the restaurant, micro-brewery and winery. Each pavilion is self-contained, and there’s a choice of one or two bedroom configurations with double spa baths and complete kitchens, and a private cellar stocked with Moorilla wines and Moo Brew beer.

The kitchen allows you to cook breakfast, but breakfast in The Source Restaurant is included in the tariff, and the facilities docks for iPod or iPhone, WiFi, a music server with a choice of music pre-installed, and the regulation audiovisual bells and whistles. While MONA is closed on Tuesdays, guests stating in the Pavilions can still obtain breakfast in the restaurant, room service, and a museum tour in the afternoon.

Cruise liner.jpg

Whether that adds up to $600 0r $700 per night is immaterial, but we’re talking niche market tourism, and at 90% occupancy they’re doing rather nicely out of it.

Once we were underway, the MONA ROMA was dwarfed by the cruise ship, which was bloody huge. You might have suspected a fair few of those aboard the ferry were cruise ship patrons. There may well have been some of those types aboard, but the passengers were scattered around the comfortable and rather swisho interior, and I don’t recall hearing an American accent.

There were quite a few of those when we emerged from the depths of the Museum an hour or two later, but most of them were headed towards tour buses, so I’m inclined to believe that most of those aboard the ferry taking in the commentary about the various landmarks and items of historical interest along the way were the bread and butter clientele of a niche market tourist operation.

Introducing the O

© Ian Hughes 2012