Year-Round Success in Agritourism

This is Tim Hammerich of the Ag Information Network with your Farm of the Future Report.

Tulip farmer Andrew Miller has a wildly successful agritourism business in Washington state, with one problem. The vast majority of his revenue opportunity is confined to a few weeks in the spring time. However, he envisions a model that can expand to attract more visitors to his farm and agritourism operation year round.

Miller... "The biggest challenge that I face is just the mono dimension of my revenue. I love the model of a reason for every season to be on the farm, being able, and there are a lot of agritourism outfits that do that. Some, some that, do them very, very well, and they're printing their own money, frankly. They're doing millions in revenue. You know, they basically, they'll, they'll start in the spring with something Easter related. You know, maybe they don't do tulips, but they'll have a baby babies and blooms like babies and berries, you know, when the strawberries are coming along, depending on where they're at. And baby animals, you know, people love that. And then in the summer, they move into, they'll have a lavender festival early summer, and then they'll move into sunflowers, and then sunflowers turns into, you know, apple picking, which turns into the fall harvest. And then there's a Christmas tree, you know, breakfast with Santa in the barn. Then in spring it's, the whole thing starts over again. So the ones that are doing it really well have figured out the reason every season for people to be on the farm, and they're charging people memberships. It's like a country club."

Miller admits it can be a challenge to balance the agritourism experience with the operational needs of the farm.