Black Friday is 27 November, Cyber Monday is 30 November, and Christmas is right behind them. For shops, that’s a month of discount wars. For experience operators, it’s something better: the weeks when people go looking for gifts, and an experience is the gift they remember.

It’s also when gift cards sell. In the last two months of the year we see three times the gift card sales we see in the rest of it. Here’s how to be ready, three weeks out.

Week 1: set up your gift cards

A gift card sold on Black Friday is a booking you deliver next summer, paid for today. It fills your quiet months, and it brings you a new guest, chosen by someone who already loves what you do.

Gift cards in Bókun are better than ever, and setting them up takes about five minutes. Go to Experiences > Gift cards in your extranet and the setup wizard walks you through three decisions:

  • Value or Experience. Value gift cards let buyers choose an amount within a range you set, so a £50 budget and a £200 budget both convert. Experience gift cards sell one experience at one rate, so «Northern lights tour for two» is a gift in its own right, not a voucher.
  • Expiry. Twelve months from the day it’s bought, by default. Leave it there. It covers your whole next season.
  • Where you sell it. Add gift cards to your booking engine on your homepage and your best-selling experience pages, not on a «Gift cards» tab nobody visits.

Two more things worth knowing. Buyers can add a personal message and the recipient’s email address at checkout, and the gift card goes straight to the recipient. And a guest can redeem more than one gift card in a single checkout, so a family can pool theirs on one booking. Here’s the step-by-step guide.

Week 2: make it a Black Friday deal

Gift cards are made for a sale. You can run an offer on them without touching the price of your experiences, and the booking still lands in next year’s calendar. Three ways to do it:

  • A straight discount. 20% off gift cards with a promo code that only works over Black Friday weekend. Create it now, switch it on first thing Friday.
  • Extra value. A £100 gift card that’s worth £120 when it’s redeemed. Set it up as a Value gift card and say so in the description.
  • A bundle. Pair two of your experiences, or yours and a partner’s from the Marketplace, as one gift.

Whichever you choose, give it a hard stop. A deal that ends at midnight on Cyber Monday sells more than one that drifts into December. Then bring it back for the last two weeks before Christmas, when last-minute shoppers are looking for a present that arrives instantly.

Week 3: tell people

Warm up your audience before the day. One email the week before («Something’s coming on Friday»). One on the morning of Black Friday. One on Cyber Monday for the stragglers. On social, post a real photo of a guest enjoying the experience, not a graphic of a gift card. And add the gift card link to your email signature and your booking confirmations. Past guests are your best gift card buyers.

Then turn on abandoned cart messages. Black Friday shoppers open ten tabs and buy from two. A reminder an hour later brings some of them back to yours.

Black Friday week: the final checks

Open your gift cards on your phone and buy one as a test. Most Black Friday shopping happens on mobile, so that’s the experience your buyers will get. Check that your promo code is set to start on Friday and end on Monday night, that your team knows the offer, and that your Gift card report is bookmarked so you can watch the sales come in.

One more. If a December booking is cancelled, refund it to a gift card rather than to the card. The guest keeps the value, and they come back in the spring.

After Black Friday: Christmas, then January

The gift card season runs right through to Christmas Eve, so keep gift cards front and centre on your site until then. The personal message at checkout makes a gift card the easiest last-minute present there is.

Then, in the first week of January, email everyone who bought a gift card with your spring offers. That’s where it pays off: the gifts bought in November turn into bookings for next season.

Gift cards are included in your Bókun plan. Nothing to upgrade. Set yours up today.

Set up your gift cards · Not on Bókun yet? Try it free, no credit card needed.