International collaborations: you could be able to offer something more valuable than money

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Gent, picture taken from the top of the Belfry, site protected by UNESCO

Even if it may seem far-fetched, sometimes people from other cultures and business fields might value your assets more than your money. By providing them with something of cultural importance or giving them access to your trusted journalists in the country, for example, you might be able to strike an advantageous deal and begin a new international collaboration.

How does it work exactly?

First things first: if you know what they want, you know what you can offer.

Pedro Weaghe from Visit Flanders explains: “Before we promote, we invest in knowledge.”

Niche and research are the new drivers of oversaturated markets, such as tourism: you need to discover what the public needs and how to promote your assets in a relevant way.

Lovers and fanatics

Pedro likes to distinguish the audiences in lovers and fanatics. The lovers travel for the experience, while the fanatics are usually driven by one specific passion or theme. It is easy to make collaborations that benefit a fanatic group. In the case of Visit Flanders, for example, the agency has access to cheap flights, as well as private rooms and halls of artistic value, which makes them able to provide unique and valuable experiences to foreign journalists, influencers, or market drivers, that will then promote it in their own words in the country of origin.

Collaborations and payback

Sometimes expectations and amusement are very different from culture to culture, and something you have easy access to might save you from investing a lot of money in a collaboration. Additionally, keeping an open mind can be crucial. Sometimes, it is hard to set the requirements of the deal at the moment, but helping the other party either way might lead you to unexpected and generous payback when you need it the most.

Pedro shares the example of when he gave access to a closed-to-the-public hall in Belgium to a Russian agency, and a year later, he was able to do a presentation to a room full of Russian journalists connected to the agency.

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Is it hard?

For some sectors, it is hard. Collaborating with a museum, for example, is usually hard to manage unless you find exactly what they need. For a famous museum, a traveling company rarely has anything that distinguishes it from the competition.

However, not everything has to be on a large scale: it’s good to start with local collaborations and partnerships and move progressively to bigger

NEWS: For small businesses, not knowing where to start can be overwhelming: here are a few tips

The added value

Personally, I believe this is not only a great chance to expand your business prospects but also a cool opportunity to experience something new, learn from other brands, and maybe even meet interesting people. Plus it will be an exciting opportunity to see your business grow and break from the day-to-day routine of running a business.

NEWS: And to conclude, here are some examples of brands that did it right!