Tropical Spice Garden : Site visit - Marketing and promotion

Top : The Tropical Spice Garden using ginger flower (bunga kantan) as their logo

Bottom: The ginger flower original picture

My attention of comparing the logo with the real picture of ginger flower is to give the idea to the readers how the ginger flower look like. Some of the visitors there thought the logo represent lotus.

12th June 2009. ( Friday )
Venue : Tropical Spice Garden
Event : Study Tour at Tropical Spice Garden – Marketing and promotion.

The day I have being waiting for arrived. I appear as early as 8.45am. Then after 20min, Miss Ho and Miss Li Peng arrived. Then we enter Tropical Spice Garden. The inspirational breeze that morning really made my day. To inhale inside with the fresh morning sea zephyr fell like you are out of the country. It is not the same normal Penang life.

This is so good about Penang. If you prefer the natural element there are place for you. If you prefer exclusive rest place, you can choose Batu Ferringhi. While if you are urban chick, go for shopping in town at the biggest mall in Penang Queensbay Mall. So, Penang has it all. I mean almost all you need.

9.40am we start our workshop. The talk is being given by Katharine Joan Chua, the manager of Tropical Spice Garden. We have 2 session that day. The 1st session begins with some introduction of the place and background of the site. They are also willing to share their secret of success.

The audience

How they start:

Mission Statement

They are environmental conscious, but as well do the business orientation.
They have enough resource
They embark upon Education, Research and Environment.

Community involvement

They take the Teluk Bahang’s women to create their own souvenir, then sell it at Tropical Spice Garden. This will help the community’s economic.
They go for rural natural environment.

Reputation & Images

They have good reputation so far. When tourists come and give good feed back that is their reputation. Beside, people comment good thing in the blog or review of their place will hold the good reputation and images. This is the power of word of mouth.

Monetary success

By having the planning will ensure they have good success in their business as well as achieve their goal and mission.


Marketing Journey

Know your asset

They have such a beautiful assets!

Build a saleable story (personality)
Identify your market (partner)
Choose appropriate method to reach out.
Sustain your assets.

Tropical Spice Garden selling point

Their stunning location which view the beach
Beautiful tropical landscaping
Over 500 species of tropical plants
A derelict site being restored to something difrent.
A singular theme – SPICE

Pegaga Gajah is one of the herbs can be found there

In my opinion, when you have your singular theme, you would not go juggling and mess around. You know what the main idea, and then expand the idea to something that is related but excited to be done. For example Tropical Spice Garden with the theme of SPICE. Besides promoting the spice, they also will be doing the cooking class which the spice is essential in each cooking. The main theme must be strong and clear, and then you will know where to expand and to go.

They used the power from the international Landscape Architect to design their site. The man changes the place from the rubber estate to Tropical Spice Garden.

These are the activity they have done

Conservation :

Recycling – all the used tins, glass and plastic.
Have their Herbarium / Catalogue
Plant / Garden maintenance
Mini Botanical Garden
Conservation the heritage building

Educational by :

Signage (plant/of interest)
In House Guides
Educational program

Educational program with school children

Research :

Linking with university grants/research program
Agricultural & botanical institution (Botanical Garden Conservation institute and MARDI)

Community Development

Fair trade – aborigines
Local trade - No Thailand product like at Batu Feringgi Night Market
Hiring from the local community

Type of interpretation tools :


Signage


Guide

Other material

They used the mortar and pastle to interpret

In house guide

Signage is the most important interpretation tools in Tropical Spice Garden

One of the signage. Diffrent colour represent diffrent trails path

Weakness in interpretation tools :

Short of plant signage
Unclear group of certain plant
Lack of interactive installation (spice sense) – the ‘batu giling’ visitors do not want to dirty their hand

Weakness in marketing tools :

Never heard of Tropical Spice Garden especially to local people.
Difficulty to measure the efficiency of marketing tools
Inadequate partnership / stuck in conventional approaches

Challenges:

No specific HR – have no botanical background in botanical/horticulture
Identify new agent. – freshly meet Puan Nazlina,
It is not public garden, so it is hard to get sponsor/grants
Permanent, durable and affordable signage.
Walking too independently – financially, expertise time and energy.

After identify the weaknesses, Katharine discusses with us the solution and if the audience have any idea they are welcome to share.

Teresa Pereira Capol suggests having cooking class.
Miss Ho agrees that telling story is good in doing in-house interpretation.

After finished the first session, we are now going to start our journey to do the tour in the Tropical Spice Garden. The picture had shown the entire scene at the site tour. What we discuss in the 1st session we look all the strength and weaknesses at the site.

We discuss about the signage. The weaknesses would be it is not resilient due to heavy wearing or weather. They have variety signage.

Katharine would be in dilemma. She thought of doing four languages signage which consist of Malay, English, Mandarin and Arabic. The weaknesses are the signage will require more space and need suitable material for its life span.

Kat explain how tourist can be help by using this interpretation tools (signage) in her site.

Conclusion :

I have learned a lot from this site visit and tourist or local should be visited this place as you will be satisfied with the services given.