It’s often said that traveling offers atypical experiences that sharpen our senses and train us to be more adaptive with creative improvision. Far removed from our usual dwellings, we have no choice but to observe our environment more keenly for both survival and enjoyment. Our usual status quo no longer applies, and our eyes begin to take into things that might be deemed too bland or extreme at home. Specifically, the time you spent before, during and after a trip can be a valuable training ground for product planning and management skills. No wonder when I feel dull, I will take a flight to big cities to sharpen both my mind and senses. In this post, I’m going to share with you things I learn during my travels.

One of the pleasures of traveling to big cities is the opportunity to closely observe local business trends and consumer patterns. Specifically, I can take the pulse of a city by visiting bookstores, convenience stores, supermarkets, malls and check out the bestselling products, customer demographics and traffic flow patterns.

In a bookstore, the bestselling books often reveal not just what people are interested in, but more importantly what problems they are trying to solve. In big Chinese metropolis such as Shanghai and Beijing, I often visit both the state-run and independent bookstores and see what books are displayed prominently and picked up by what demographic sector. Such books often reveal the trending societal fear or anxiety. In Japan, I will visit one of the Tsutaya T-Site and check out their curations. Tsutaya is well known for hiring staff who possess editing and curation skills like an exhibition curator. They build a strong selection of books and peripheral products around a theme and it’s interesting to observe how such curation can cross-sell products in a tight space.

I also enjoy checking out new hotel openings and the underlying economy trend driving it. I’ve noticed the dumbbell pattern of new lodgings in Tokyo, which is the proliferation of both hostels and ultra luxury hotels. I would expect there is high competition due to all the new hotels opened before 2021 Olympics, but actually the strong rebound of foreign travellers and cheap yen have changed Tokyo lodgings’ pricing model to operate on high single transaction price (individual travelers) instead of low single transaction but high volume tour group (mostly from mainland China). As a result, hotel price keeps rising.

Another genre worth studying is new malls. Lifestyle trends come and go and they can easily be visualized in malls. No matter how easy it is to shop online, people still crave the weekend relaxation and sensational thrill from window browsing and dining with friends and family. In a metropolis such as Tokyo, basically every train station is a mall or a conglomerate of malls. Just Tokyo station will easily consume you one whole day for browsing and studying trends across industries. For example, strolling along food booths, you will notice the hippest health trend now. Peeping into home goods shops may tell you whether minimalism is still trendy or what color theme is most popular now. Just like hotel pricing model, you can see whether people are buying cheaper goods in volume, or buying fewer but more luxurious items. You can also examine which stores are tapping into consumer psychology in the smartest way.

In between the places you visit, I also get a good view of the local economy by studying the ads in public transportation and venue exterior, walkway, elevator and various consumer touchpoints. Not only will I be able to pick up the most popular products and cultural hints (e.g., the genre of exhibitions, magazine ads showcasing the stories people are interested in, etc.), I will also notice the kind of business that is still able to pay big advertising money.

An unexpected means to study the psychological needs of a city’s residents is by examining amulets or handouts from religious organizations. In my last visit to Tokyo, I walked past Honganji in Tsukiji and noticed that they started to distribute free weekly postcards with reassuring messages aiming at comforting people’s anxiety during uncertain times. I didn’t recall such offering pre-pandemic as usually there were only scripture handouts.

traffic flow and conversion

Throughout the day, depachika, or underground food halls and train station malls are all fighting for passing traffic’s attention. Among so many options, what draws people to a particular food booth? What is their targeted customer journey? Outside of the buzzing booths, we can also observe how people flow and congregate in the public spaces.

business research at home

When I’m back home, I will do further research into the why behind companies, products and trends I encountered by reading local business journals and autobiographies of company founders and CEOs. An example is the different products sold by the same convenience store chain in adjacent streets. Or the new offerings such as more and more individual serving packs ready for microwave, as well as frozen items. It seems more people are dining at home after the pandemic and convenience stores are encroaching into the domain of izakayas.

Life lessons gained during travel

Plan

Travel planning is using different facets of product management skills when you collect data, edit, curate and prioritize.

  • Prioritize unplanned issues while focusing on the most important goal of this trip. For example, if travelling with parents, their comfort is the most important thing. It’s not about bagging the most spots but letting parents take good photos to share with others and having a relaxing time with family.
  • Build trip around non-movable parts, like performance schedule or some ryokans that have limited availability. All other itinerary items can be shuffled around these blocks.
  • Leave at least 30% of time open to “invitation”. That means unplanned shows, gallery exhibitions glanced from train ads, etc. Sometimes by just going to a place, you will trigger the domino effect as the ads and hints are contextual. For example, if you go to a museum, you will see ads for other museums in the same genre. Going to a photography gallery will bring you lots of tips on where to visit next, as it is customary for upcoming photographers to pin postcards advertising their exhibtions in different galleries. One visit leads to many.

Improvise

Things won’t happen according to plans. It’s okay to plan ahead with the places you want to visit and reserve those hard to get in places. But be open to the possibility that inclement weather or a messed up transportation system will derail your plans. Be open to anything and respond accordingly.

Don’t force oneself into a “must” itinerary, rather discover more impromtu findings. It might be a cliche to say that the unexpected might be even better than what you planned, but it is often true. If you plan A and only expect to see A, you are in fact limiting your world. Be like water, don’t overimpose.

Be confident

Trust yourself that you can manage any unexpected events with your skills and if not, have confidence that you can leverage external resources.

Be resilient

Rebound quickly. Bad experiences such as theft, plane delay, being scammed in tourist spots will happen sooner or later. The trick is to let go immediately and move on to the next place in your itinerary. In a trip, we don’t have much time in each place, so it is not worthwhile to allow emotions from bad experiences to flow into our next stop. Box it in, to draw a parallel to the saying that “what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas”.

Be more balanced

It’s definitely prudent to be on the watch out for personal safety when we are in unfamiliar places. But we have to strike a fine balance between trust and skeptical as too much of the latter will overtax a brain that is already scanning all the foreign signals for processing. It also negates the gift of exploring the unknown.