Presenting the present: How to give your business the wow factor

I love to travel. A lot. Well, as much as I can these days with an eight-week-old and a two-and-a-half-year-old.

As much as I love to travel, I equally hate booking my own travel, so I use travel agents. Over the past 15 years I’ve used a lot of different travel agents. Our most recent trip wasn’t a big one, but the impact made by my current travel agent before we left was large.

Mel, the travel agent who booked this most recent trip, lives over an hour’s drive away and she hand-delivered the documents to my office as she was passing through my home town (first nice touch). When I saw the package, I thought the gorgeous, solid hot pink box was a present of some sort, surely to welcome my new daughter to the world.

Upon opening the box I saw a gorgeous bound notebook, all my travel documents and just the most gorgeous way of presenting them I’d ever seen (photos below). Certainly a huge step up from the plastic or canvas type pockets I was used to.

The branding was subtle, and not enough to make me not want to display it proudly, and I honestly felt really special. The cost of booking the holiday was thousands, the cost of this innovative twist on preparing my travel documents, bought in bulk, insignificant – and yet the impact was huge.

I love what they’ve done and it’s totally got me thinking… how can I incorporate this kind of wow into my own business?

From broke at 19 to retired at 27, Kirsty Dunphey is an entrepreneur, mother and author, and lives by the motto Memento Vivere (remember to live).