5 Pass Structures That Fill Your Slowest Months

Restaurant Week/Month Pass: Give a Slow Week, or a Slow Month, a Reason to Show Up

Bundle fixed menus or special offers from local restaurants into one pass, and time it to whatever stretch actually needs the traffic, a single week or a full month.

Explore Elk Grove runs its Restaurant Week every January because, as the DMO's Casey Fabbri put it, "restaurants typically see slower traffic following the holiday season." Participating restaurants offered a prix fixe menu at a fixed price, and pass sign-ups jumped 89.5% year over year, from 2,349 to 4,451. Afterward, 71.4% of merchants said they expect the extra exposure to bring them new customers, and 80.6% of passholders said the pass got them to dine out.

Keep Waco Beautiful took it further: it sold an in-pass sponsorship to Uber Eats that covered its entire Bandwango license, then still raised $55,000 for the nonprofit, with 2,013 passholders taking part.

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Paid Tasting Pass: Turn a Quiet Season Into a Reason to Visit Wineries and Breweries

If your local wineries, breweries, or distilleries go quiet for part of the year, a paid tasting pass gives visitors, and locals, a reason to show up anyway.

Calistoga Chamber of Commerce runs its Winter in the Wineries pass from December through mid-February across 19 wineries. It's driven more than $135,000 in passport sales and added over $10,000 to Chamber revenue versus the prior year. Chateau Montelena alone generated about $40,000 in passport sales, and the Chamber credits the pass with preventing staffing cuts during their slowest months.

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Check-In Challenge: Stretch Engagement Across a Slow Stretch, Not Just a Slow Week

When the slow patch runs for months instead of one week, a check-in challenge can run right alongside it, rewarding points and prizes for visiting local spots throughout the whole window.

Destination Toledo ran Coffee Quest 419 from March 15th through June 15th, deliberately targeting their slower months. It drove $200,000+ in spending at 28 local coffee shops, pulled in 4,824 sign-ups and 24,500+ check-ins, and brought in visitors from over 20 states.

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Savings Pass: Activate Locals When Visitors Aren't Around

Tourists thin out, but locals don't. A savings pass packages discounts from local businesses so residents have a reason to spend during the quiet months instead of waiting on tourists to come back.

St. Pete-Clearwater built the 727 Day Passport around their area code and launched it July 27th. 8,588 locals signed up for deals across 135 businesses, from attractions to coffee shops to breweries. It picked up enough earned media (ABC, Fox 13, WTSP) that the DMO is expanding it into a full-month July program.

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Itinerary Pass: Give People a Reason to Stay a Second Night

An itinerary pass is a curated, choose-your-own-adventure guide through your destination, a handpicked list of stops instead of a single event or trail. For a slow month, the pitch to visitors is simple: here's enough to do that you should stay an extra night. That matters because a slow month is often as much about how long people stay as it is about how many show up. Point the pass at lesser-known spots instead of the same handful of hotspots, and you spread spending across more of the destination and more of the calendar instead of concentrating it on peak weekends. It's the same thinking behind Bandwango's Slow Tourism approach: give people 2 days worth of reasons to stay, not 2 hours.

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Which One Should You Run First?

Pick based on what you already have. Wineries or breweries losing foot traffic? Try a paid tasting pass. Restaurants that need a push during one slow week or month? Restaurant week. A slow stretch that runs for months, not one week? Check-in challenge. Want to activate residents instead of chasing tourists? Savings pass. Already drawing day-trippers you'd like to keep overnight? Itinerary pass.

For the planning timeline, when to launch and how far ahead to line up partners, see Shoulder Season Planning: How to Fill the Slow Months Before They Arrive.

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If you want to talk through which structure fits your slowest month, book a demo with the Bandwango team.