They’re Not Falling for It: The Ballad of the DINKs

It’s fall, which means somewhere in America a destination marketer has opened a spreadsheet, found a soft week, and said, “What about the DINKs?”

Double income. No kids. Two adults with disposable income and, apparently, no plans of their own.

I understand the appeal. They can travel when school’s in session. They might stay somewhere lovely. They might buy the good wine. In tourism, we talk about DINKs the way sailors once talked about mermaids. Nobody in the meeting has met these particular people, but we’re quite sure they’re out there.

So we put a couple in matching sweaters on the website, drop the nightly rate, and wait.

The DINKs do not come.

Maybe the price is wrong. Maybe they already have plans. Maybe they both have jobs, which is how the double income part works, and one of them has a Wednesday standup that cannot be moved. Or maybe they clicked through and asked the question every traveler eventually asks:

”What’s there to do around here?”

This question has ended more romantic getaways than a shared bathroom.

A beautiful place to stay is a start. Unless the guest’s goal is to sit in a nicer living room than their own, they need some idea of what happens after check-in. That matters most in shoulder season, when the trip doesn’t come with an obvious reason or date attached.

In 30 years in tourism, I’ve watched a lot of trips start with something happening. A concert. A game. A festival. A friend’s wedding. A college reunion nobody wanted to organize and everyone’s glad happened. The event goes on the calendar first. Then people figure out where to sleep.

For a quiet Tuesday in October, we ask them to run that process backward. First, please book this available rental. Then we’ll see if there’s a reason you’re here.

That’s a tough sell. It’s an even tougher stay when the visitor arrives and the restaurant in the campaign photo is closed until Thursday.

About the leaves

Before anyone says “fall foliage,” I’d like to speak on behalf of destinations whose trees refuse to participate.

Some of us get spectacular color. Some of us get a slightly less aggressive sun. Some of us built a pumpkin patch in a parking lot and are begging everyone to please crop out the pharmacy.

Weather matters. In one place, October is the main attraction. In another, it’s finally safe to eat lunch outside. Somewhere else it’s wet, windy, and the perfect excuse to vanish into a bookstore for three hours. Fall is a date range. Shoulder season is a date range too, and yours might land in spring or get wedged between two completely different peaks. What it feels like on the ground is the part you’re actually selling.

Who’s actually free on a Tuesday

“Shoulder season audience” sounds like a segment. It’s really a crowd of very different people who share one thing: they can leave when everybody else can’t. What they do with that freedom varies a lot.

The DINKs are real. They’re just not a mood board. They’ll pay for a good trip and walk away from a vague one. What they often want is the thing they can’t get in July: the reservation, the quiet trail, the bartender with time to talk. Give them two days that feel nothing like their regular Tuesday and Wednesday, and tell them exactly what those days look like.

Empty nesters are choosing a destination for themselves for the first time since the minivan. Some want to do everything they skipped for 18 years. Some want to sleep until nine and eat a lunch that isn’t chicken tenders. Both groups can spot a stock photo of a silver-haired couple laughing at a salad from a mile away.

Retirees have the most flexible calendars in America and the least patience for a wasted trip. They’ll drive, they’ll stay longer, and they’ll read the whole page. If the museum is closed Mondays and Tuesdays, they’ll find out. They’d like to find out from you.

Remote workers can stretch a weekend into a week if the Wi-Fi holds and there’s somewhere worth going when the laptop closes. A bar stool at the kitchen island is not a workspace. Neither is the patio, whatever the listing photo implies.

Solo travelers want dinner without being seated by the kitchen door, tours without a single supplement that doubles the price, and some sign the place is comfortable for one. A bar with good food and counter seating is a solo traveler’s best friend. Put it in the guide.

The visiting friends and family crowd already has a reason to come. They need a reason to stay one more night, preferably somewhere other than Aunt Linda’s pull-out sofa. That’s a very winnable night.

Friends traveling together have been saying “we should do this” since 2019. They need a rental with enough real bedrooms, a plan one person can pitch in a group text, and a date that works for everyone, which is to say a date that doesn’t exist. Help the organizer. The organizer is doing unpaid labor.

Parents without kids, having pulled off the rare logistical miracle of getting away, have about 41 hours and would like every one of them to count. They don’t want to discover things. They want to be told.

Families with little ones aren’t on a school calendar yet. A three-year-old doesn’t care that it’s October. A parent of a three-year-old cares very much whether the attraction is open, the restaurant has a high chair, and nap time lands near a parking spot.

Travelers with disabilities might be the most underrated shoulder season audience of all. They get their own section, because they deserve more than a paragraph.

None of these people is a magical shoulder season audience. Each needs a trip that makes sense for their time, money, energy and interests. “It’s less crowded” can be appealing. “It’s less crowded because everything is closed” is less of a selling point.

Shoulder season is accessibility season

For a lot of travelers, “What’s to do around here?” comes with a second question: “Can I actually get in?”

Shoulder season might be the best answer our industry has. Shorter lines matter when standing is hard. Fewer crowds mean room to maneuver a wheelchair or scooter, and a calmer space for a traveler who’s autistic or sensory sensitive. Staff have time to answer questions. Accessible rooms and rental units, which are scarce to begin with, are actually available. Milder weather is easier on a lot of bodies. And a slower week suits a trip that runs on planning, which describes most trips taken with a disability.

Here’s the catch. None of that helps if the information isn’t there.

“Accessible” on a listing can mean anything from a roll-in shower to one grab bar and good intentions. Travelers with disabilities want specifics. How many steps to the front door? How wide are the doorways? Does the shower have a lip? How far is it from parking? Is the path paved or gravel? How high is the bed? Event listings need the same treatment. Is there seating? Is the restroom accessible? Is the “short walk from the trailhead” short for everybody?

Vacation rental managers already know most of these answers, because guests ask. Put them in the listing. Measure the doorways. Photograph the bathroom from the doorway, the way a wheelchair user would first see it. Then tell your DMO which properties work, so the destination can say so with confidence.

DMOs, this is a chance to lead. Give accessibility details the same care you give the hero video, and retire the accessibility PDF from 2014. Put people with disabilities in the fall campaign having a great time, right alongside the couple in sweaters. They travel. They plan ahead. They bring companions. And they come back to places that got it right.

The Tuesday Test

Many DMO fall campaigns are already planned. The photos are picked. The media’s booked. Someone approved the pumpkin.

I’m not proposing anyone throw out six months of work on a Tuesday morning.

I am proposing a quick, mildly uncomfortable exercise. Pick one week you’re promoting. Pick a traveler from the list above. Now plan their trip using only what a visitor can find.

Start with a date. Look for something happening that week that would make the trip worth taking. Check the hours at the three places you’d send them for dinner, and whether any are open the night they arrive. Check the entrance, the parking and the restroom. Read the rental listing the way a guest would. Then figure out what they’ll do at 4 p.m. on day two, after the thing they came for is over.

Then do it again for a different traveler. The retiree and the remote worker will break your itinerary in completely different places.

If the answer is good, make it easier to find. If it took you 40 minutes, three outdated event listings and a phone call to confirm there’s a ramp, imagine how long the DINKs gave it. About four minutes. They’re somewhere else now.

Your guests are telling you things

This is where vacation rental managers have an opportunity they may not fully realize. You hear “What’s to do around here?” constantly. You know which guests came for an event, which ones added a night, and which ones stood in the kitchen scrolling their phones because nobody told them where to go. You hear what surprised them. You hear what they wished had been open, and which step, gate or gravel driveway made the stay harder than it needed to be.

That’s destination intelligence. It should travel farther than the checkout message.

You don’t need to produce a festival to help. Share what’s genuinely happening nearby. Ask a local business what it could do on a slow night. Tell the DMO which experiences guests keep asking for and which dates are hard to fill. If you’ve found a great Wednesday, put it in front of guests before they arrive.

DMOs can connect those dots across the whole place. Maybe a small event already exists and deserves a bigger audience. Maybe three businesses would stay open late if they knew the others were doing it too. Maybe a guided walk, a chef’s dinner or a one-night pop-up gives people a reason to pick that week. Maybe it’s as simple as a sensory-friendly morning at the museum that nobody’s ever bothered to market.

It doesn’t have to be enormous. It has to be real.

I’ll be at VRMA this week, and I want to hear from property managers. What gets a guest to book an otherwise quiet stretch? What question do you answer over and over? What local thing do your guests love that the rest of the tourism industry barely knows exists? And what accessibility question do guests ask that nobody in your destination can answer?

Because the DINKs are out there. So are the retirees, the friend groups, the solo travelers, the toddler parents, the wheelchair users and the people with a surprise free weekend.

They can travel while the rest of the world is at work or in school. Lucky us. We still have to give them a reason to come.

And if our entire answer is a discounted Tuesday and a pumpkin in a parking lot, I regret to inform you: they’re not falling for it.